Fan fiasco: Summer cooling attempts go up in smoke - Kevin Page

It all started well, then there was a bang and the fan started to smoke. Photo / 123rf

So, Mrs P and I decided we needed to buy a fan.

We figured our reasoning was sound.

Where we are it is hot and sticky. Experience tells us as the year quietly draws to a close and emerges as 2025, it will get even hotter and stickier.

Experience also tells us if we don’t get off our chuffs real soon and get things sorted, the country will run out of fans and we’ll be confined to buying a couple of bags of ice, sticking it in a big plastic box and then standing over it with a towel with one of us wafting the supposedly cooler air towards the other.

Just like we did last year. Sort of.

Mrs P merely reclined like Cleopatra, the ancient Egyptian queen, and I acted as her slave and wafted the towel. As you do.

Anyway.

This year, as I say, we thought we’d get in before it was too late and quickly scanned the internet for possibilities.

In our house we are big on doing the research.

So much so our children often shake their heads in wonderment – I suppose, now I think of it, those shakes could be of disgust – when we often emerge from weeks of such action with no firm result.

I believe the kids call it Paralysis by Analysis.

This time, however, we are determined not to fall into such a trap and suffer the kids’ wrath.

Naturally, we’ve done a good bit of online research and we’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities.

Each is at a different retail outlet in a different part of the town we are in at present. So, if nothing else, we’ll get to have a good look around while we drive to each place.

It has to be said the first fan we looked at was not that great. It didn’t really have any of the attributes we were looking for and, well, just looked plain ugly too.

If I’m being completely honest I put it on the list of possibilities only because the shop was two doors down from a coffee stop. It was also just across the road from an op shop I’d seen on earlier drive-by reconnaissance.

I’ll put my hand up right here and admit I was hoping Mrs P would remove the padlock from the doors of the Treasury and remove a few gold coins to allow me to purchase a moccachino.

I would simply suggest, on leaving the retail outlet, she go have a look at the op shop and I’d grab a coffee while she browsed. At her own pace of course.

Simple. Well, you’d think that wouldn’t you? Unfortunately not.

The plan backfired miserably.

For starters, Mrs P twigged to the fact the fan in question was basically rubbish the second we saw it. Add to the fact the shop selling it had no airconditioning and it was a stinker of a day, so her blood began to boil with frustration and discomfort pretty quickly.

As we emerged from the shop I made my op shop offer – remember the possibility of me getting a coffee hinged on her replying in the affirmative – but was rebuffed. In no uncertain terms.

“Way too hot to be messing around unnecessarily,” she said, heading back to the cool comfort of our airconditioned ute.

Once I picked my jaw up – I mean she’s never ever turned down an op shop opportunity in the past. It must have been really hot – we drove away, my mocha dreams disappearing in the rear vision mirror.

At our next stop we acted decisively and settled on a double fan with an attachment that would let you clip it on to anything you wanted. It promised salvation, so we bought it and set off home, which you may recall, is now our caravan.

Ten minutes later we were back at base and assembling the aforementioned fan.

Once we’d translated the instructions – presented in symbol form like the Da Vinci Code – we managed to put the thing together and clip it to a cupboard door.

Then we turned it on.

To be fair the thing worked fine. Unfortunately, it was quite noisy.

“Can you turn it down a bit?” I asked Mrs P from the other end of the caravan where I’d gone to check on its effects.

“Sorry?” came the reply.

“Turn it down a bit,” I replied, a bit more baritone in my voice.

She came back with a similar level of decibels.

“That is the low setting,” she said. “This is high.”

With that she turned the gadget on full bore and a roar filled the confined space.

Eventually, via sign language, I managed to communicate with my beloved and she turned the machine off. My fillings were still rattling as I bundled the fan back into its box.

It would obviously not be appropriate. Particularly if we were looking for something that offered a nice, cool breeze during those hot summer nights.

I mean this would not only blow away the cobwebs, it would positively send them to the top of a mountain 15 miles away.

So back to the shop we went.

A quick aside here before you start looking up various trading rules and regulations.

As I understood it, the shop concerned was under no compulsion to provide me with a full refund. I might be wrong there. Not sure. The fact is they were extremely helpful and did just that with a minimum of fuss.

So, armed with the cash we were still trying to spend, we set off to the third shop where the next fan awaited.

This time we were confident we had it right.

All the reviews said it was a nice, quiet fan. Gentle breeze. Lightweight. Take it anywhere sort of thing. Perfect.

So we took it home.

Again, we solved the Da Vinci Code instructions and put the bits on that needed to go on and plugged it in.

Now, I don’t know about you Dear Reader, but I never tend to worry about anything as simple as flipping a switch. I just take it for granted everything will be okay.

Oh, how wrong I was about to be.

For starters, everything went well. I plugged the fan in. Moved it to where I needed it to be on the bench and then flipped the switch.

In that millisecond where connectivity with power is established, something untoward happened and instead of the fan whirring into life it simply went “Bang!!!”. Then it started to smoke.

So, with the thing sitting there starting to smell, with a wisp of smoke still in the air, I needed to switch it off and pull the power cord from the socket.

Concerned the whole thing might still be live, I looked for something to yank it with. All I could find was a rubber kitchen glove.

Have you ever tried to put one of those on quickly? It’s impossible.

Eventually, with two fingers in one hole and another finger hole inside out, I got enough coverage on my hand to feel confident and was thus able to complete the operation successfully.

Back at the shop half an hour later, we were asked if we wanted to replace the blown fan with another one.

Naturally, we declined. We’ve had enough of fans to last this summer already.

We’ve decided we are just going to open the windows a bit wider.

And if it gets too hot I might grab a towel and a bucket of ice and get Mrs P to put her Cleopatra outfit on again.