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There were mainly magnets on our fridge. Or photos of Neil and me smiling. I liked the magnet that went Everything is Figureoutable because it was different from the rest.
It was full of colour inside our fridge, like a play when the lights come on. Sauces and chutneys and jars of floaty pickled things, pinky-white ham and Dairylea. Shifting shapes. The Warburtons bread in the top left corner, the pull-out bottom where the green stuff hid. Dad’s Tupperware boxes. One for sarnies, one for reheatables. Neil’s Mega Muscle juice.
Sometimes ice crept onto the back of the fridge and Mum had to scrape it off. It made our knives bendy. And in the fridge-door, one of the egg-holes was cracked so Mum told us to watch out when we opened and closed it because there was a sixth egg wobbling there. We never broke it though. We broke other things.
Dad’s footie friends called Mum the Spaghetti Queen for a while and so she started to keep spaghetti sauce in an orange bowl on the middle shelf and wear dresses where you could see her tits.
I remember using that orange bowl to do my jelly experiment. I popped Churchill into hot yellow jelly water and watched him swim about a bit, then I put him in the fridge. When Mum opened the fridge she laughed her head off.
We buried Churchill out the back and I knew Mum was trying not to laugh when we said the Lord’s Prayer. I buried a magnet with Churchill that said Neither Lost Nor Found.
When I turned ten, Mum made this fruitcake birthday cake and it stayed on the top shelf forever. She said it was because it was shelf-stable, not like us lot.
About Katie Lodge
Katie Lodge is a British teacher/translator based in Lyon, France, where she lives with her two kids. She writes personal essays for Huffington Post UK and Litro Magazine, and is currently working on a short story collection on the themes of belief, rootlessness and the sublime mania of singlemumdom. She is also part of the Found Fiction adventure where stories are hidden in trees and other unexpected places.
