By Ian Coates

Last updated 11:45, Tuesday, 02 September 2008

I’m waiting for a knighthood. I followed Scott of the Antarctic. Not into the frozen wastes of the Southern Hemisphere because of a considerably lower budget and I only had the weekend.

After five years of solo living my freezer was deemed to be unsuitable for purpose and needed defrosting.

I don’t know if it’s the male point of view or just mine; but a freezer seems to be more convincing at keeping food cold if the said freezer actually looks like the mid winter Siberian tundra, complete with icicles and force three blizzard every time the door is opened. Apparently this is not the case.

In my drive to reduce fuel bills, I was told my freezer was working inefficiently.

I emptied the contents and was surprised to find items I had forgotten about hidden under the drifting snow. Some kinds of foodstuffs were years old, some unrecognisable and some I had no clue of their origin. To me, all would have been set aside for future consumption.

The theory being that a freezer keeps things fresh forever. It seems not. I was told the model I have is just an everyday food freezer and not a cryogenics facility.

All the dodgy stuff was thrown into the bin under protest and the defrosting began.

In a setting reminiscent of the ice age, bowls of hot water between the glacial shelving did not seem to have the necessary thermal power to alter the state of my freezer interior. I needed global warming but due to millions of years in time restraints I used my hot air paint stripper instead. Not the manufacturers recommended method but then those guidelines went out of the window with the glacial drift.

In the melted water were thousands of peas, 4 slices of salami pizza and a few possible cave paintings that would interest the British Archaeological society.

On the down side, eating from my freezer is no longer such an adventure and I’ve begun another chore for every ten thousand years.