Well, this is it. The cows are dried up for their winter holidays and we are gearing up for ours. I know my last column was about how it feels good to be 40 – I feel more confident in myself than ever before – but it would be nice if time could slow down just the tiniest bit. Christmas is looming and I’m nowhere near prepared.
Himself isn’t too bothered. He is looking forward to nights of no milking; sitting by the fire and watching films with the children. Not a care in his head about whether everyone has equal amounts of gifts or how Christmas dinner is going to end up on the table.
I invested in a fancy new kitchen a few years ago when we renovated the old farmhouse. I got the works: a Quooker boiling water tap, two smart ovens and one of those fancy hobs with the extractor fan inside the hob so you don’t need a hood overhead. I had visions of perfect Christmas dinners in my head (sure I had TWO ovens – double the productivity). No gas, no need for a kettle. I thought we had finally arrived.
The thing is, with all these fancy new yokes you need to know what to do when they break down. I remember when we were living like paupers in the ‘old house’, I had a situation with our dishwasher (the situation was that an entire city of mice had moved in to where the heating element was and had a big party).
The dishwasher broke, but not to worry – the father-in-law “knew a guy”. This guy came, saw and conquered. He was able to fix it and mouse-proof the dishwasher so no rodents could ever move in again. This was an absolute donkey’s age ago and that dishwasher is still going strong.
Now, I have all these other fancy appliances that require fancy repair-people. These things are great when they work, but a few weeks ago one of my smart ovens outsmarted me; turning on the child lock for (seemingly) no reason. I couldn’t open the door. I tried everything; watched every YouTube tutorial.
So, I am back to using the old kettle and down to one oven. This is what happens when you get kitchen notions
Eventually I got a message from the oven saying “programming error”. There are very few people – if any – in our area who can fix these appliances, so we need to fork out over €85 just for the pleasure of having our fancy repairman come for a visit.
Do you know what bothers me the most about this? Our kitchen is just three years old. I don’t think I’ve done anything to make the oven have its little “hissy fit”. The Quooker boiling water tap is broken too. I need to buy a new filter for the tap and for my new fancy hob and I can’t afford either with Christmas on the horizon.
So, I am back to using the old kettle and down to one oven. This is what happens when you get kitchen notions. You feel deliriously posh and think “Isn’t this great? It’s all so convenient”. You feel the smugness only fancy people with fancy things can feel: “Oh, we are doing our bit for the environment. Sure everything’s energy efficient and running on electricity!”
But what if the oven’s hissy fit is more than a hissy fit? We are past the two-year warranty and that “right to repair” lark I keep hearing about doesn’t seem to have reached the farm. In the days of non-digitised appliances, my husband or father-in-law could always either fix things themselves or they would “know a guy”.
I’ll tell you – the days of “knowing guys” are long gone. This is modernisation. To top things off, our washing machine died a death recently. Now in this case, we did know a guy. But this guy wasn’t going to bother to come and take a look at the machine.
“It’s over,” he said. “The way they build these machines now, it’s easier to buy a new one than to fix a broken bearing. Buy a Bosch – easier to fix.”
Happy freaking Christmas to you, too. If you need me, I’ll be back to my auld pauper ways; using only one oven and a dirty hob filter to cook the Christmas dinner, while my dear aul’ husband watches films by the fire. I’ve learned my lesson – I’ll never have kitchen notions again.
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