Defrosted, a Decycled Freecycle and a Doughy disaster

Much of Tuesday was spent defrosting. I don't mean my demeanour which is always sunny and sweet excepting in my relations with the evil Oberbinfuhrer and his apparatchniks when it could be described as positively antarctic.

Since Monday my dining room has been taken over by squatters. Glowering at me like a pair of evil twins are the old fridge and freezer. Having successfully transferred all frozen foodstuffs to the new appliance I now had to defrost the freezer. Unwilling to have the axminster deluged by melting ice I hit upon another one of my cunning plans. Perched on a stool, resting on a polythene sheet and tilted forward and to one side the freezer was perfectly positioned to divest it's icy trickles into a plastic storage box. And there it sat occasionally warmed by a fan heater. Although old and like their owner, a tad worn about the edges, they were still serviceable, the freezer more so than the fridge which had a hair trigger thermostat. Naturally from the moment I ordered the new one, the fridge had behaved impeccably. I had been about to have both items carted off to the cold store in the sky when I remembered the Freecycle network which had proved efficacious on several prior occasions. Feeling philanthropic I placed an advertisement and almost immediately received several replies. The deal was struck! The lucky recipient was to pick both items up this morning. I confidently set about giving both appliances a wash and brush up paying particular attention to the less attractive areas at the rear. I should have known that the fickle finger of Fate had not yet finished with me. At 10am the expected phone call came but NOT to arrange a collection time. The items could not be collected today and there was doubt about when and indeed if they could be. Unwilling to go through the whole procedure again I decided to contact my arch enemy the Oberbinfuhrer in his capacity as Oberrecycler. Speaking to one of his minions I was pleasantly surprised to be told that they could pick the items up in about 1 hour. Feeling much relieved I settled down to wait confident that I would then be free to reclaim my dining room and exit Chez Kojak to purchase much needed provisions. Wrong again! 1 hour passed, another hour slipped by without any sighting of a collection team.
Deciding to occupy my time by using some of my diminishing milk supply to  furnish me with a crust I loaded up the breadmaker. Immediately after switching on I became aware of a worrying change in the normal mixing noise. My anxiety was further heightened when I spotted a small pile of flour next to the drive shaft. The drive shaft ought to have been attached to the mixing pan yet here it was innocently peering up at me from the kitchen worksurface. In an attempt to salvage what I could from this mishap I attempted to insert the drive shaft and connect it to the kneading blade which was somewhere at the bottom of the flour, milk and water mixture. My success was quickly doused. Extracting my hand and turning to rinse off the doughy goo that was dripping everywhere I heard a sickening rattle as the drive shaft shot out and disintegrated on impact with the worksurface. Simultaneously the hastily placed bread pan tipped over and spilled a nasty gooey mess which began to drip down onto the floor. Meanwhile my hand was shedding gobbets of the flour milk and water mix over everything else. It took an age to clear up the carnage. When I finally found the strength to phone the evil recycleherren I was informed that the recycling team were running late and therefore would not call until the next day.
Oh, and I didn't win the lottery either...