Enormous changes at the Hovel. We have a toaster. Quite how I have managed to live for nearly two years without a toaster escapes me; how I have managed not only to maintain my Body Mass Index, but actually put on weight, without a toaster, beats me completely. Depression and solitude, I found, made me lose all interest in cooking, which was itself a cause for further depression, as, if I say so myself, I have a reputation as quite a good cook. My south-east Asian crispy duck stuffed with an incredible but tasty array of exotic spices has been considered worthy of inclusion in the local primary school's book of worldwide recipes. (I was once, though, so hungover that I made a chilli con carne but forgot to put in any onions, which, as I realised, was like writing an article and forgetting to put in any verbs; but even that wasn't as bad as you might have thought, and my guests were very nice about it.)
But we don't entertain at the Hovel, at least not in a dinner-party way, unless we're having a toast party, which we have never been confident of doing, particularly as we have a rather poor track record when it comes to putting bread under the grill and taking it out before it gets horribly burned. It is after the latest in a long series of toast-related catastrophes that I cry "Enough!" and go to John Lewis, taking the Next (In Effect) Mrs Lezard with me to stop me from buying a top-of-the-range toaster (which costs hundreds of pounds and still burns your toast).
Our mission accomplished (and what a strangely moving experience it is, looking through the electrical goods section of John Lewis, for all the world like a young couple contemplating their wedding list), we return to the Hovel, our hearts pounding with excitement. The good and conscientious people of John Lewis have thoughtfully provided an instruction manual for their own-brand, two-slice toaster. Razors and I pore over it carefully.
You might think that operating a toaster is like riding a bicycle, in that, once mastered, the skill never leaves one, or that a company which decides to go into such detail about this not-exactly-arcane method of food preparation could be said to have scant faith in the intelligence of its customers, but these days you cannot be too careful.
“Place one or two slices of bread in the bread slots, and press the handle right down until it latches." This is straightforward enough, or would be, were it not for the ambiguity contained in the words "one or two". Which is it to be, we ask. One or two? We need help here. There are actually three of us at the time - Razors, myself, and the Next (In Effect) Mrs Lezard.
In the end, out of sheer giddy euphoria, we decide to go for the full two slices, bearing in mind that "if the toast starts to smoke before it has popped up, toasting can be stopped by pressing the Cancel button". Not to mention the wise words: "If you should find that the toast is not dark enough you may wish to toast the bread again." (Then again, you may not. You may think, "Screw this for a game of soldiers", and eat slightly undercooked toast. But the instruction manual omits this, perhaps mindful of the delicate sensibilities of John Lewis's customers, which is nice of them, considering that if they're all like us, then they're the kind of cheapskates who don't want to spend more than £10 on a toaster.)
The adventure is not over. We dimly remember that there is more to this toasting lark than just putting the bread in the slots and pushing the handle down. Luckily, here is the manual to help us: "When toasting has finished, the handle will rapidly rise to the fully raised position." They're not kidding. Boiing! Up it leaps, like a salmon. "The toasted bread can now be removed and the toaster is ready to recommence toasting." You mean, we ask ourselves with a wild surmise, we can do this again? We can, and do, gorging ourselves on toast until we are sick at the very sight of it.
But my heart goes out to the poor sap who had to write the instruction manual. One can imagine the scene. John Lewis's in-house copywriter, whom I see as a young man crushed by a year's unemployment following a decent 2:1 in English, has been asked to supply instructions for a machine that even a baby intuitively knows how to operate. The job, not in itself the most richly fulfilling that he can imagine, has suddenly got worse. He can see where it will all end as, with half his mind elsewhere, he taps out his weary phrases on his Mac. Some smart alec taking the piss out of him in a national magazine. To which I can only say: Don't worry, mate. I've been there, too. It gets better eventually. Sort of.
