dear me, my wife can be ungrateful at times. not often, but just at times. like this week, for instance, when she started drawing my attention to adverts for, of all things, kettles. what a fussy lady! i mean, i bought an ace steel kettle not more than 8 years ago. in that time it has made and warmed some 11,000 bottles for James and then William, and indeed made nearly as many, if not more, cups of tea and coffee.
something of a debate ensued, with me accusing her of being a slave to fashions and trends for wanting a new one so soon. i pointed out things like how James Cook, from the same village as me, didn't find Australia by messing around with replacing domestic appliances on a regular basis.
such rational observations held little, if any, sway with my beloved. in an attempt to re-enact that bit out of Star Wars where Obi Wan says that Darth Vader is "probably more machine than man now", she mumbled something or other about "the lid is welded on with limescale" and "the filter for it vanished years ago".
it was clear that my well thought out defence against buying a new kettle was going to fail in the face of such extremist nit-picking from her, so off i went to get a new one. Michele felt that she had given me strict instructions to get a similar or exact model, but i took this as more of a vague gesture in passing.
instead of a new steel one, then, i got this beauty!
now, i am not going to claim to be an expert in such things, and thus i have no idea what the exact technical difference is between the steel one it seems the wife wanted and this ace plastic one i got instead. all i know is that the one i bought has possibly the most excellent added feature in the history of kettles.
our (or should i say my) new kettle - get this - does a little bell sounding "ting" thing when it has boiled! how excellent is that! well, very excellent, really. myself and a sales representative of the establishment from where i bought it spent several minutes fiddling with a demonstration model of the aforementioned kettle, making it go "ting" and commenting on just what an outstanding feature it was. it was sold the moment it made the noise, really.
Michele is slowly, although in an unsure way, coming to terms with the shattered dream of not getting a new steel (or metal equivalent) kettle and is gradually embracing how excellent the "ting" noise is that it makes. not that i am particularly bothered about her feelings on this matter - if she had shown the vision and foresight to buy me some sort of other appliance (kitchen or otherwise) that made an excellent "ting" noise, well then she could have had any kettle that she damned well liked.
i thought that this meant that, at last, i was the owner of the coolest, most excellent kettle in our whole family. this thought, however, was destroyed by my Mum, who pointed out that Gillian has a kettle that - get this - makes a whistle noise when it boils! blimey! of course i am devastated by this revelation, but at the same time absolutely delighted for my sister.
Michele is trying to comprehend why i, and indeed the majority of my side of the family (except Dad, who i dare say could not care less what a kettle does so long as it makes him tea) has a "kettle fetish". i don't know myself, really. the answer is probably in the fact that they are shiny and provide tea and coffee, and thus should be revered.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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