A Question of Scale

There was an incident, many years ago, about which I still mock my dear husband.

I left him in charge of ordering us a new freezer.

And off he went and did all his research in a very thorough and 'man with important electrical business to undertake' way.

He located, via the Internet, the ideal freezer and WAIT FOR THIS - it was about half the price of any other freezer available. Even though it was made by a well respected brand and had all the 'bits' (whatever 'bits' freezers come with - I am unsure. I know what they don't come with - 6 inches of frozen pack ice, a multitude of stray peas and unidentifiable packages of frozen meat which may have been placed in there at any time during the last 5 years but you are dare not throw away because of fear of 'waste'. Thus they sit - frozen in time - like those Woolly Mammoths they occasionally uncover somewhere in Siberia).

The freezer sounds too good to be true?

Well yes, it was.

I was somewhat suspicious and a quick investigation on my part revealed that the reason the freezer was half the price of all the others was because it was (less than) half the size.

It was a miniature freezer. The kind of thing you would put in your caravan. The kind of thing which would hold a small pack of mince and a small pack of frozen peas (at a push).

Sigh.

It was like that bit in Spinal Tap where they confuse feet and inches and their show stopping replica of Stone Henge arrives looking more 8 inches than 8 feet high....

Anyway - I have of course regularly ripped the piss out of the poor man over his 'freezer/Spinal Tap' crapness.

Only recently Internet shopping seems to have been getting its own back.

The reason the bottle of wine I ordered (in which to cook a whole chicken) was so cheap was because it was a miniature bottle. You can imagine my surprise when I pulled it out of the bag to find I could fit the entire bottle in the palm of my hand.... I don't know about covering a whole chicken, I think it just about covered its ankle. I can't be sure because despair led me to drink it (all 2 gulps).

The reason the 'large gammon' I ordered (you know, like a giant ham you cook in a giant pan and feeds a family of 4 for 4 days?) was so cheap was because it was actually a large gammon STEAK. As in a sheet of meat - no more no less. Not feeding 4 people full stop.

The reason the raisins were so cheap was because they were a 'snack pack'. Not quite the 1kg sack I was hoping for.....

And so on.

My cupboards resemble some kind of scene from Alice in Wonderland where everything has shrunk.

So the moral is - read the small print. And be careful what you laugh at...

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