My fridge

The salad drawer of my fridge is much like that farm in the countryside where parents tell their kids an elderly and much loved family pet is going to spend the last days of their lives. 

A place where vegetables and salad leaves are supposed to enjoy their twilight years before becoming part of a beautiful and nutritious dinner, appreciated for its freshness and tastiness by me and Chris. 

The reality, however, is far more sinister. Much of what enters my fridge, after Tesco has delivered the groceries on a Thursday night, is immediately forgotten about. Hidden in the recesses of the refrigerator it shrivels up and dies, often leaving a puddle of putrid gunk behind in which the other vegetables marinate until they too meet their undignified fate.

Have you ever seen fungus growing on mushrooms? I have — it’s like something out of Inception. The plethora of shrivelled up radishes that seem to permanently populate the bottom of the cabinet, seemingly manifest from nowhere simply to expire at the bottom of my fridge like hard red eyeballs. I recently found a long forgotten cucumber which had liquefied inside its cellophane sheath and was dripping out of a hole in the end. It was grim.

Ultimately, these rotting cadavers are flung mercilessly into the green recycling bin which sits outside our kitchen door. It’s here they start a new life, for inside the green bin the rotting food begins a new life-cycle and it’s like something out of a sci-fi film. What begins as a squashy courgette or a blackened cauliflower eventually re-emerges as a living being. 

The rotting groceries, accompanied by garden waste and cheered on by swarms of marauding flies, metamorphosised into colonies of sentient beings. Mobile beasts which seem to be conscious but have no discernible head, body or anus for that matter. At this point, if the bin men haven’t collected the recycling yet, they start their ascent up the inside of the wheelie bin in their first move towards freedom, whereupon they intend to enact their revenge upon mankind (me).

Thankfully, the bin men come every fortnight so we’ve not quite reached that stage yet but I tell you, it’ll happen one day. And woe betide anyone in the vicinity as a Cronenbergesque creature emerges from the darkness and slobbers its fridge juices down their unsuspecting face.