Do you want ice in it ? (From Watford Observer)

Do you want ice in it ?

10:01pm Saturday 19th February 2011 in Michael Duffy By Michael Duffy

At the tail end of last year our 6 year old ice maker gave up the ghost and decided to go to the great scrap heap in the sky, my footballing mate Bill Samways who knows a bit about electrical things ( they named Samways Electrical Services after him) had been and had a poke around and pronounced it as beyond repair.

On occasions like this it’s good to have a mate like Bill as it saves spending a lump of money having an electrician trying to bring something back to life when it is often more economical to buy a newer & better machine.

So I trawled the internet and chose a machine made by a company called ‘Polar’ reckoning that a combination of a name like Polar with a picture of a polar bear on it to emphasise just how icy their ice makers were would do the trick.

The ‘Polar’ arrived and we plumbed it in and left it alone to do what it’s best at – produce nice semi cone shaped cubes of ice.

All was well for a couple of weeks until we started to notice that some days we had ice and others we had to run up to Budgens to buy ice.

So, being under warranty, we called out their engineer who arrived and replaced a part and soon we had ice again.

Until the following week when it went on strike again.

So we called out the engineer again who visited and took lots of things off and put them back on again and soon we had ice.

You can probably work out where I’m going with this, can’t you ?

So I called again but this time I was warned that in the engineers opinion there was nothing wrong with the machine and if he visited and found that it was our fault that we were iceless then there would be a ‘nominal’ fee of ……..£120

For it seems that our ’Polar’ ice maker, in the opinion of ‘Polar’, is situated in the wrong place, it is actually in our real ale cellar which is kept at a constant 12 degrees and that is too cold for our little bear.

You see our ‘Polar’ bear likes the warmth of a kitchen or being in the bar where it can join in the banter with the locals, it just doesn’t like being kept downstairs with only barrels of real ale for company.

There is a way round this and that is to fool the ‘Polar’ into thinking it is warm by rubbing the thermostat between your thumb & forefinger, it likes this, and after a few minutes it gurgles happily and starts producing ice cubes.

Only problem is I have no fingerprints left and Sophie is losing her initial enthusiasm as she now has grooves down the side of her fingers.

As far as ‘Polar’ are concerned it’s not their problem, I’ve bought an ice maker that doesn’t like being in the cold and I should have read the manual that came with the machine before I plumbed it in.

I am now knitting my little bear an overcoat in the hope that it will warm him up a bit and keep him happy.

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