Opinion

Anita Robinson: As a desert island castaway, I’d be the one they’d eat first

I’m left with the alien device and a Book of Destructions. Lord, I hate having to master anything new
I’m left with the alien device and a Book of Destructions. Lord, I hate having to master anything new I’m left with the alien device and a Book of Destructions. Lord, I hate having to master anything new

IT is 8.59am. I’ve been up since seven.

I have tidied round the kitchen, concealed the unwashed saucepans in the dishwasher, wiped down my surfaces with pungently-scented disinfectant and closed the door on the chaos that is the futility room.

I am ready for the delivery and installation of my new fan-assisted oven.

The old one snuffed it seven days ago. I got in the car immediately, chose and bought its replacement within the hour – white, with foolproof functions and idiot-friendly controls.

Examining the receipt, I found that delivery, installation, warranty and disposal of the old cost more than the oven itself. Also, my delivery slot would be six days hence, between 9am and 1pm – on hairdressing day. How deeply inconvenient.

In the interim I’ve eaten a surfeit of salad and would sell my soul for an oven chip.

I have a dismal record with all things electrical, mechanical or with moving parts. The wadge of bumf that comes with them is written in a lingo I fail to understand.

Spoiled by half a lifetime married to an electrical wizard, I never had to replace so much as a lightbulb or battery and I couldn’t tell you the difference between a grommet and a sprocket.

He had a garage full of tools and a notebook full of knowledgeable contacts to fall back on if he couldn’t do it himself.

Now of course he’s gone, barely a month passes without something going on the blink – the boiler, the shower, the blocked drain, the broken lock – each either a drama or a crisis. The syndrome I suffer is, I believe, called ‘learned helplessness’.

11.20am. Excuse me. The Man and the Lad have just arrived to install the oven. 12.00 noon. Courteous and efficient, they’re done, dusted and down the drive with the corpse of the clapped-out oven in 40 minutes and wouldn’t even take a cup of tea.

Now I’m left with the alien device and a Book of Destructions. Lord, I hate having to master anything new.

I approach the oven gingerly and twiddle a few knobs. Nothing happens. Oops! Silly me… I need to switch it on at the source.

The fan sounds a trifle asthmatic and the controls are all different. I hate it. Abandoning experiment, I have salad for lunch and microwave my dinner. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Later, I ring Daughter Dear for sympathy and moral support. “Honestly Mumma, it’s not rocket science,” she scolds from the moral high ground, having often helped her father and absorbed many of his practical skills.

Were I shipwrecked and cast away on a desert island with other survivors, as the least useful, I’d be the one they’d eat first. Maybe my ability to write an elegant rescue note-in-a-bottle might be my salvation? I doubt it.

Sophisticated technology is wasted on me. I came out of teaching just as the infant electronic revolution was born, when school computers were great grey lumpen thing you could stand plant pots on (and I did), their functions rudimentary.

Once outside the system, my lukewarm interest dwindled and died. Nor have I any intention of rekindling it. My time’s too precious to fritter away exchanging empty inanities online with people I don’t know.

Like nearly every advance and invention devised by the good and well intentioned for the benefit of their fellow man, it has been distorted and corrupted by the unscrupulous.

The result? A modern-day Tower of Babel, where our young flounder for lack of a moral compass and grace, pity and integrity count for little.

There used to be an old epithet, “He who steals my goods takes dross. He who steals my good name takes all I have.”

The difference between ‘liberty’ (freedom) and ‘licence’ (disregard for convention) is long erased. It doesn’t seem to figure much in the Twittersphere.

Oh dear! My eccentricities multiply with every passing year. And d’you know what? I don’t care.

Maybe I should put all this online? If only I knew how to do it…