Almost 20 years ago I did something intensely stupid. I agreed to a kitchen design which included a boxed-in area for our existing fridge. It meant that, as the years passed, the only fridge we could have was a relatively small one which could fit that space. It didn’t matter that we soon became a family of three and then four; that the house could be crowded with children’s friends who also needed feeding. We were stuck with this tiny bloody fridge.
The kitchen had other failings. There was a stupid area to the side of the stove inset with raised metal bars. We were meant to use it for hot pans coming off the flame. We never did, but nor could we use it as a preparation space either. There was a corner cupboard that was so cavernous, things got lost in there for years, and a bin system under the sink that rusted up as water dribbled into it from above. It was painted a ludicrous colour somewhere between rust and DayGlo orange.
Last week, a team of hefty Russian builders, who drink their coffee black and always turn up on time, ripped that kitchen out. Half of it was thrown into the garden to await its moment in the skip. The other half is having a last hurrah, as a temporary kitchen in the living room, while walls are knocked down to make our new kitchen.
I should be delighted, and in many ways I am. As a middle-aged man with an overly developed interest in his dinner, the thought of a new kitchen is practically arousing. But I also feel like I am being unfaithful to that old kitchen. After all, we saw so much together: the culinary disasters and triumphs, the dinner parties and the seemingly endless parade of family meals that have delivered our eldest to the very edge of adulthood. We all of us act out the business of family in different ways, but the kitchen with its unique rituals and conventions is at the heart of it.
Over the years, we first made an accommodation with the flawed design and then came to embrace it. I looked at other peoples’ huge fridges with disdain, as though they were a shameless indulgence. Every Christmas I prided myself on my skills at what I called Fridge Tetris, the art of loading the small fridge with the ludicrous ballast of a midwinter feast. That corner cupboard was a brilliant place to store things I had no use for but couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away. And closing the rusted bin drawer just took a careful knee action. Yes, it was a flawed kitchen, but it was my flawed kitchen and I knew how it worked. Now, it’s all but gone.
The new kitchen will not be orange. It will not have an area inlaid with metal bars. And wait till you see the size of my new fridge. But this I can guarantee: it will still have what look like failings. Because there really is no such thing as the perfect kitchen. They are machines, and too complex a mix of geometry, engineering and dirty human foible for perfection to be achievable. Something will still be not quite right. But that’s OK. Because like kitchen design, cooking isn’t an exact science either. This man and that machine will have to learn how to work together, to embrace each other’s shortcomings. We will cook. A new adventure is about to begin.
