Mrs Gabb and I often have cause to go away from home for a week or so at a time. Sadly, we live in a part of the country where power cuts are not uncommon. This raises the fear that all our frozen food will defrost and then refreeze. This may be something you only find has happened after you have started vomiting.
What I do, therefore, when going away is to fill a coffee mug with ice cubes and put it into the freezer. If, when you come back, the ice cubes have become an even layer of ice, you know that the freezer has been off long enough to justify binning all the food. If, on the other hand, the cubes are more or less as you left them – and remember that, unless you keep your freezer at a very low temperature, gravity alone will cause some merging of ice cubes – you have nothing to fear.
There – not a word about politics, nor even about the many excellences of my friend Richard Blake, the critically-acclaimed and internationally best-selling author, whose novels are ideal for bringing smiles to all those hard-to-please faces this coming Christmas.
