To Kill a King!

Today I hope to exorcise my self of a demon and free myself of the OCD (Obsessive compulsive Disorder if you are trying to work it out) I have developed over the last few months. Every time I leave the house I try to resist but it has just been getting worse and worse. I get so far before I have to turn back. I even phoned a neighbour when we were on our way to the mountains for the weekend to check for me. Other people have been dragged in. It has to stop. I cannot help myself. After leaving, I turn around, come back into the house and check that I haven’t left the kettle on the hob! (They don’t call them hobs here!) I check even when I know I haven’t.

I can pinpoint the exact moment that started this compulsion. The traumatic moment of horror. It was the day I killed the kettle. Because we are only here temporarily it seems silly to invest too much…in friends…furniture… electrical appliances! They have silly plug holes. They have different wattage and voltage. They have no fuses. They don’t have much of a spark really!

I like nice kitchen appliances – not that I use them but I like them. I am a bit of a label whore when it comes to kitchen things and it has stood me in good stead in this strange land. I was here 5 weeks before my belongings caught up with me. We had a sofa, a mattress, camp beds, a couple of deck chairs and some stuff from Ikea to keep us going. Not a single neighbour called by in those first 5 weeks. As soon as my container arrived I was inundated with visitors. I thought they were being friendly. They asked for the ‘grand tour’. What they really wanted to do was look in my cupboards. They were checking me out to see if I was acceptable, to see if I was Wisteria Lane standard. My Le Creuset pans stood me in good stead as did the comedy cup cake mixer my hubby got me for our anniversary – it was Kitchen Aid…one of the few exceptions to buying American appliances because, in his eyes, the comedy effect was worth it!

They didn’t seem to know what to make of my kettle. Very European! Maybe they were left thinking we didn’t have electric kettles in England. Rather than investing in an electric kettle hubby purchased a special gift – a King of Kettles…. (or maybe more a goddess) – an Alessi. You are forgiven for not knowing what one is. In fact you can smugly read the rest of this thinking what a sad Tw*t I am (for those who find swearin’ an a cursin’ offensive, I missed out the ‘i’). The kettle is a thing of beauty (I am sober!) I had coveted such a kettle from afar and couldn’t believe that I was the proud owner of one. They say pride comes before a fall… My kettle had a little whistling birdie. The birdie whistled when she was boiling (you know the sort!). One day I ignored the little whistling birdie. I ignored it long enough for it to run out of steam. Long enough for the whistling birdie to lose the will to live, to melt and drop off, for the handle and lid to melt and for the base and innards of the kettle to turn black. I didn’t pay it the attention it was whistling for and it died from the neglect and resulting injuries. Maybe not murder – manslaughter!

You can see that this would be traumatic and make me want to double check in the future but this wasn’t the point of trauma. That came shortly after. The kettle had been a gift but I think hubby got it because he was secretly a tw*t too and wanted one. Whilst I was horrified that I had killed the kettle, it seemed easily remedied. I would order another from Amazon. That is when the real trauma occurred. I had wanted an Alessi kettle and I might be a tw*t but I would never have paid that much for one (like Le Creuset – far more expensive in the States than the UK). I had killed The Precious!

I got the cheapest stove top kettle I could find and confessed all to hubby! It is a real shame that it took such a mistake to learn from it. I took very good care of the cheap kettle. I jumped at its first lousy spluttering (no birdie singing) and I came back for a second, sometimes a third check on it before I could depart from the house. No long slow death for that ugly son-of-a-bitch.

Today, I am a serial killer. Today I took control. I smashed the kettle (a little vindictively) and threw it in the bin (trash!). I purchased a third kettle. I have succumbed to silly plugs in exchange for peace of mind. It is an ELECTRIC kettle. This Kettle was cheap (relatively), has no fancy credentials or name! It has clearly heard about me – it just sits in the corner and doesn’t make a noise and most importantly it turns itself off! Now all I have to worry about is its stupid little plug and the absence of a fuse. There is more than one way to kill a kettle!