EDitorial ± 27-Jan-2005

650 Watts

Coo, I had me a good one two nights ago. There was I in my dream kitchen, 10.45pm, dishwasher thrumming into life, Radcliffe & Armitage rabbiting on the radio, thinking I'd have a slurp of hot choc before hitting the hay. Slop some milk into a Sidebottom mug — not too full, mind, we're not made of money — and into the microwave for 88 seconds.

Pause to listen in on the R2 banter for a min, then back to the oven's LCD numbers. Hold it... hold it... hit cancel! Poor thing never had a chance to sound its universal "I'm done" signal of four elongated beeps. Like Linford, I was in there by the B of the beep. Such a simple yet subtle pleasure.

Sure, I could have aborted the milky mission with a few seconds left, but those tiny time periods hang around on the display like an old work colleague who keeps talking and talking and won't let me leave. Sorry, where was I? You want to see the clock redisplayed on the microwave? Then you need to re-press that cancel button: imagine all that wasted tactile energy over a week, a month, a lifetime.

What are these waves?
They're coming over me
It must be my destiny
— Blancmange, Waves

Equally I could have waited for that droning quartet of tones, but kids and wife and cat were all in the land of nod, zzz-ing away. Perfectly acceptable during daylight hours, like a car's horn; much less so post the watershed, esp. in a neighbourhood watch area like mine.

If You Take Away With You Nothing Else

Auto start, auto defrost, auto cook:

  1. used earlier this evening for swelting sweetcorn and steaming spuds
  2. also, at 7.55pm, two minutes on high for the boy's microwaveable bedtime teddy
  3. if we didn't have the 'wave, where we put the felt tips, fish food and Frosties freebies?

Be seeing you!

Ed