"Even if I got rid of all my problems, I'd just go out and get new ones..."

Kitchen fitters and food rambles
1:29 p.m. on 2004-04-22

Erugh.

Sorry, am eating my lunch, a chicken pasta salad, and... you know when you hit something crunchy, which you know shouldn't be there, but you don't want to fish it out of your mouth because that would mean finding out what it is, so you just crunch past it and swallow quickly, trying not to gag.

Yeah. Ew....

Should mention at this point that currently my mother is having a new kitchen fitted. It's her very first brand new kitchen, so I guess I can forgive the amount of time and money being ploughed into it.

However... I don't think she's thought this through.

First, there is the wine rack. It is inbuilt into the counter, reaching from the floor to the waist. It can hold about fifty bottles. Methinks this is a little overkill, given the only bottles we normally have in the house are dusty containers of crap that were old Christmas presents no one wants to open, or a cheap bottle of plonk that my sister bought to get wankered on, and has now left to ferment in the fridge for a couple of months.

Then, there's the hob. Who puts a hob over a washing machine?

Yes, I know it's *possible* I know it's unlikely that anyone will want to put the washing in whilst someone else is watching custard burn. But still... it just doesn't feel right. Food should not be in close proximity to washing.

Then there are the cabinets. My mother has decided, in her infinite wisdom, that she wants one of those 'show' kitchens, complete with glass fronted display cases. Which is fine, except we've got fuck all to show. A couple of naff looking glasses which were popular in the seventies, and some crystal vases which, frankly, have seen better days. Meanwhile, the prescence of these cabinets has halved the amount of proper storage space we have. So whilst my mother plans backlighting to show off her ugly matching red and yellow cocktail glasses, I wonder where we're going to fit all our everyday crap crockery.

Finally, there are the kittens. True, we haven't bought them yet - we're waiting until the kitchen is complete, so they can't accidentally get shut under floorboards like our old cat did. Unfortunately, what my mother hasn't quite realised is that as soon as she buys these kittens and welcomes them into the house, they are going to see the brand new, wooden-cupboarded kitchen as one giant scratching post.

Quite apart from the fact that her new kitchen will smell of cat shit.

I could excuse all this, the mess, the fact we're currently eating microwave meals out of the conservatory, that it's taking over a month to finish, that it leaves my mother snappish and irritable, if it wasn't for the simple fact that no one in our house cooks.

Okay. So my mum makes a roast once a week. But for the other six days, meals come down to a preprepared chicken breast ready bought, bunged in the oven, and served up with boiled vegetables and mash.

If my dad wanted a marble topped counter and slate floor, I could understand. Both he and my stepmother are big on cooking, from scratch, anything from a Chinese to Greek.

We can't convince my mother of this, however. Even when my sister suggested that the best design we could have for a kitchen would consist of a giant chest freezer, a table for the take away boxes, and a stand to put the trays.

Ah yes. We're a family of the noughties...

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