The American author James Thurber once wrote that his mother never pulled out electrical plugs because she firmly believed that electricity leaked out of the sockets during the night.
Well, I’m not a hoot-‘n’-a-holler off Thurber’s mother. I’m a compulsive reader of newspaper accounts of house-fires started by fridges, tumble-dryers or unattended hair-straighteners and gardeners electrocuted by their own hedge trimmers.
There are three electric clocks in this house that only tell the right time for six months of the year. I wouldn’t change a light bulb if I could get anybody else to do it.
I have a dismal track record with electrical goods. It’s as if they know I’m afraid of them and, like disobedient children, they act up. For example, the thermostat on my washing machine has a mind of its own. You have to twirl the dial to the hoped-for setting and, while random timings flicker on and off, wait with a thumb poised to make a lightening jab at the ‘start’ button the split second the right one appears, otherwise your delicates can be churning around in there for hours.
The elementary skills of recording television programmes, playing videos or DVDs are alien to me. I’m computer illiterate, my mobile phone is one small step up from the two cocoa tins and a length of string and I cannot stay in a kitchen while a pressure cooker is doing its thing.
I’m a technological idiot, a willing victim of ‘learned helplessness’ and nobody’s to blame but myself. The late Loving Spouse’s patient and persistent efforts to make me more competent only led to heated rows or icy silences. Oh, how I miss that man!
My latest casualty is the microwave – a big grey brute of a thing with multiple options of which I used precisely three, viz. defrost, heat through and baked potatoes. I switched it on and a message trickled across its little oblong eye, ‘please refer to book of instructions’. Fergawdsake! Who still has a book of instructions for a seven-year-old microwave? I sought advice from my friends. With one accord they chorused: “Bin it. Buy a new one.”
I stood for a long time in the microwave avenue of the electrical store, reading labels. Eventually, a nice young man approached. “Y’awright?” he enquired. This I took to mean, “Can I help you madam?” “I’m looking for a microwave,” I responded, stating the obvious. “It has to match the kitchen.” To give him his due, the expression on his face didn’t alter. A fruitless fifteen minutes ensued while he deftly demonstrated model after model, some of which I swear could do everything but dance the polka. When at last I made an entirely arbitrary choice, he loaded it into the car, I drove home, unpacked it, carted the deceased one to the Museum of Dead Things (aka, the garage) and sat down to read the Book of Words – all TWENTY-NINE pages of it, the first eight of which are DIRE WARNINGS.
That was last Wednesday. I haven’t used the new microwave yet. I’m only on page 14 of the Book of Words. It doesn’t help that the controls of this yoke are totally different from the old one. Each button performs a dual function, with options for auto-cooking, quick-start cooking, a dial to change the power level and a facility for two-stage cooking, ‘from defrost to dinner-table’ that you’d need a degree in electronics to produce.
Look, I can postpone this no longer. Stick around will ya? I don’t want to do this on my own. Here’s a grand big spud – scrubbed, pricked with a pointy knife. Open the door. Pop it on the turntable. Press ‘start/+30 secs/confirm’ button. Turn ‘time/weight/auto’ dial to adjust cooking time. Press ‘start’ again. Take refuge by kitchen door. It’s very noisy, but the spud’s going round. Beep-beep-beep. Press ‘stop’. Rescue hot potato. Heave sigh of relief. This is one expensive baked potato. Oops! Should’ve done one for you……
