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If You Ask Me: Humanity's Greatest Invention

Thursday, 24 October 2024 08:00

By Flo Whitaker

This month, Flo Whitaker writes in praise of humanity's greatest invention: the kettle

Despite a lifelong devotion to tea, I’ve never craved a bedside tea-making machine. Frankly, I was surprised to learn they’re still being made. Although the thought of waking to the cheerful sound of a brew in progress appeals, my few experiences with tea-makers have been unsatisfactory.

Technology has doubtless improved them, but disagreeable memories can scar – literally, in the case of Aunt Peggy, who had a middle-of-the-
night encounter with a malfunctioning tea-maker, when a jet of boiling water rudely disturbed her slumbers. Fortunately, she was spared serious injury by a thick upholstering of pre-war flannelette pyjamas, (her unsympathetic sister waspishly remarked, “At least the water put her bluddy fag out.”)

For all her bed-smoking faults, Peggy hailed from that remarkable ‘make do and mend’ generation. Despite being a woman of not-insubstantial means, she lived in a world of extravagantly darned socks, bodged electrical repairs and DIY plumbing solutions that Heath Robinson would probably describe as ‘bonkers’.

Her malevolent tea-maker featured an Art Deco style square teapot and boiler, a tortoiseshell-effect alarm clock and matching lamp with hideous tasselled shade. The machine’s apparent silence lured you into a false sense of security, for it would ‘go off’at random; the boiler nozzle playfully squirting scalding water up the wall or over the bedside cabinet as the lightbulb angrily flashed and fizzed.

An unpleasant awakening is guaranteed to get the day off to a bad start, so I’ll stick with technology I can trust. I’m not paranoid – but confess to owning four kettles: No 1: electric. No. 2: ditto, electric, (spare.) No. 3: whistling kettle for gas hob, (in case of power cut.) No. 4: Cast iron kettle/ trivet, (for open fire, in case of gas failure.) Should the end of the world be announced, do pop round. We’ll have a nice cup of tea while we wait for the zombie apocalypse.

 

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