The electric kettle's on/off switch became intermittent. Once we'd have lived with it until it failed completely but those genteel poverty days are over now. The measuring tube on the side of new kettle lights up blue ("Like a disco," says Professional Bleeder). This seems unnecessary – a feature that is likely to fail first and turn the kettle into junk. Twenty-first century deception.
The previous kettle (on the right) lasted years perhaps decades but there was no sentimental attachment. How is it some devices come to be loved?
● VR's Prestige knife, bought 58 years ago, serrated edge long since departed; now more a weapon then a utensil. Years ago VR cut tip of her finger off with it. Might that be the emotional tie?
● Panasonic microwave has endured almost twenty-five years. Heavily made, dull brown, reliable. Seeing that go would cause a pang.
● Also heavily made, Sellotape (US: Scotch tape) dispenser allows you to tear off strips with one hand. Bought specially for me. Literally indispensable.
● Amtico floor tiles in kitchen. Cost a fortune (£1600 in 2003) but still good as new. Rare case of opting for top of range.
● Neff oven and glass hob. Also top of range. Previously preached about on Tone Deaf.
● Brabantia touch bin. Touch top, bin opens - a gimmick? Nah. Hands full of nasty rubbish? Use your elbow. Lasted more than ten years.
● Plastic vegetable strainer. Lightweight, indestructible. Came free as Persil promotion, mid 1960s.
● Plastic pineapple corer. Lakeland. Twenty years-plus. £4? Does exactly what it claims to do – though unexpectedly.
A top of the range hob, huh? Here in Trumpland a "range" is an appliance with a cooktop(hob) above an oven. So we all have top of the range hobs, more evidence that America is being made Great Again.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: Just to complicate things the top-of-the-range hob is on the other side of the kitchen from the top-of-the-range oven. Were it on top of the twin-oven oven VR would need to be 10 ft tall to fry an egg.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear Trump's campaign promise is being maintained. But he's also keeping another promise. Remember "Drain the swamp" - getting rid of all the useless and/or corrupt Washington administrators? He's doing that too. The fact that all of them were appointed by him is neither here nor there.
We have a cracked and half broken plastic pan which once was white and part of a kitchen scales, a cheap and nasty and not very actual thing. When we peel and chop vegetables for dinner (something we do almsot daily), we use it to collect the bits that will go into the compost. The scales are long gone.
ReplyDeleteThe pan disintegrates by the year and yet, we hold on to it and have been using it since 1982. One day it will have disintegrated for good. But until that day, this ugly broken thing reminds us of the weeks and months we used to weigh our tiny premature baby daughter, several times a day, to reassure us that she was gaining weight.
Very impressive disco light kettle, though nothing compared to the Russel Hobbs clarity range.
Sabine: I love "a nasty and not very actual thing".
ReplyDeleteEven when the pan disintegrates you won't throw the parts away, nor should you. That link with the past is far too emotional. Collect the bits and put them lovingly in a plastic box with a transparent top. Stick that somewhere in the kitchen where it will always be "in the way". You'll sigh at the irritation and simultaneously glow at the memory.
I am thinking of Elizabeth Bishop's poem about Robinson Crusoe's knife. Apt, very apt!
ReplyDeleteMarly: Oh yes. Right on. Spot on. Wood-grain on the handle: TICK. Tip broken off (years ago): TICK. Reeking of meaning: TICK
ReplyDeleteAnd there's a story which says important things about its owner, my wife, VR. Fifty-plus years ago we had returned to our flat in central London (Gloucester Place, one block west of Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes famous), not drunk but tipsily happy. VR went into the kitchen to prepare a snack. As aforementioned, the knife slipped and cut a slice, shallower than a hemisphere but fractionally similar geometrically, from the tip of her finger. It bled profusely, but here's the kicker. She sought to hide the virtually un-hideable fact from me and a male friend with us. Not wanting to make a fuss. A byproduct of her training as a State Registered Nurse, a form of stoicism presently being tested by an infliction of shingles that has lasted over a year.
The relevant passge:
The knife there on the shelf—
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain on the handle ...
Now it won’t look at me at all.
The living soul has dribbled away.
My eyes rest on it and pass on.
Elizabeth Bishop, Crusoe in England. Source: The Complete Poems 1927-1979 (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1983)
We have many more kitchen knives now yet VR continues to use the Prestige knife, I, being more pragmatic, don't. As with my eponym "My eyes rest on it and pass on." Occasionally I sharpen it.
Oof. Shingles. Much sympathy. Just got my shot. Good thing she is stalwart. Still, an awful plague.
ReplyDeleteGlad the Bishop-Crusoe hit (nicked?) the spot...