There is no diplomatic way to say this. My wife frowns at me for allowing our automatic kettle to do its job.
"The kettle is boiling," Katherine announced the other night during another television commercial break.
"Don't worry," I said in soothing tones. "It's an AUTOMATIC kettle so my bet is it will turn itself off."
This was not well received.
I have to confess that I WAS sitting closer to the power point and it WAS me who had put the kettle on.
But, heck, can I help it if I find TV commercial breaks too hard to prise myself away from?
I have to say here, in the interests of marital harmony, Katherine is not a kettle control freak. It is just that she read somewhere that if water boils for too long it can burn the coffee beans.
But this is a very hard concept for me to accept.
I drink a lot of coffee and I do not think I have ever spat out my first mouthful in disgust because the beans tasted burnt.
Not that we use real beans much. We usually drink instant coffee and I really doubt you can do much with those granules that have not already been done in the process of putting them into a jar.
Anyway, I grew up with the family mantra in the 1960s: "Make sure you boil that kettle properly."
This repeated advice was designed, I think, to head off any young thoughts of using water from the hot water tap for making tea or coffee.
There were all kinds of creepy crawly bugs in the water system, we were warned, so the more vigorously the water was boiled the less chance we would have of ingesting something nasty with our tea and biscuits.
This same theory, incidentally, was applied to every vegetable that came into our house; it was boiled to the point that not even its mother would recognise it. The downside was that all vegetables that were slopped on to our plates tasted roughly the same: yucky.
These were the days when we did not have kettles that turned themselves off.
When someone announced "the jug is boiling" we had to get up an actually turn it off.
And this was just as well.
I remember being taught at school how the steam kettle provided the inspiration for the invention of the steam engine.
I can deduct from this that had the automatic kettle been invented back then, or even it had but was subject to strict rules that it had to be turned off before it did its job, the steam engine might never had been thought of - and what a sadder, lonelier place the railyards of the world would be without trains, eh?
I think I might have tried to tell Katherine this the other night.
"It's OK," I said as the jug bubbled away. "I am quite sure it will click off soon. That's the sole reason for its existence. We should be happy about it."
Besides, as I said, I was engrossed in a TV commercial and did not want to get up at that moment.
Katherine will hate me for saying this, but TV commercials are another of her pet hates.
In my mind, TV advertisements are nature's way of stopping you from peeing your pants.
With commercial-free TV you sometimes have to make a choice between taking a toilet break and missing some of the action.
This is never, ever a problem on commercial TV - especially at those high-rating times when you seem to get three minutes of commercials for every two minutes of program.
Some people sensibly use this time to make a quick trip to the dunny.
Others channel surf.
Some even go and make a coffee or try to tell the kettle what to do.
The problem arises when the commercial is actually engaging as, much to Katherine's chagrin, it often is to me.
I am not sure why this bugs her so much.
After all, it is entirely possible that one day I might want to buy a power tool or a genuine Persian rug.
Hey, one day I might even see a fire sale for a batch of second-hand non-automatic 1960s kettles and I know she would hate to miss out on one of those.
PS: In the interests of balance I feel the need to list the things about me that annoy Katherine after nearly eight years of marriage :
©June 9, 2003 John Martin. All Rights Reserved
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