Kitcheny

I have got no idea what I was thinking about when I decided that it would be a good idea to read books about serial killers, on my own, on a deserted taxi rank, in the dark.

Somebody came and banged on the window at about one in the morning and I almost bashed my head on the roof. He even looked a bit like a serial killer, except that I don’t imagine serial killers being very intoxicated with their hands full of kebabs and chips.

He wasn’t a serial killer in the end. It is unlikely that anybody would be a serial killer on Windermere taxi rank, not least because the very name implies that they have killed lots of people already, and nobody has been killed in Windermere for ages and ages, apart from a bloke who had a row over somebody else’s girlfriend once, a few years ago. The very best it could be would be an aspirational serial killer, hoping to make his mark and starting with a poor vulnerable taxi driver.

I don’t even fit that bill. The other night I overheard two girls wondering about where to find the Stag’s Head as they passed me. One of them said: Shall we ask that taxi driver? and the other replied: No, she looks terrifying.

I was pleased about that.

When I got home we looked at the newly-lifted kitchen, which is much, much better, and discussed what to do next. I pointed out some further modifications that I wanted, to which Mark agreed with barely a sigh, and then whilst he was in the shower I looked at pictures of other people’s kitchens that I had found on Google.

They were all pretty much the same, and very dull, not at all ‘beautiful kitchens’ which was what I had put in the search engine. In fact I could hardly tell them apart, they were all variations of plain white cupboards and wooden floors and nothing that could be described as beautiful at all.

They all had fruit bowls full of the fruit before it had gone off at the other end of the week, and pot plants that somebody had carefully deadheaded and watered regularly but not too much, and there was not a single pair of muddy work boots or dog accident puddle to be spotted anywhere.

Our fruit bowl is invariably full of twiggy stalks which once had grapes on them, brown bananas, and squishy pears which were purchased because everybody ate them all the time, but which they suddenly stopped liking, all at the same moment.

I save the gone off fruit and chuck it through the liquidiser and into a curry. Nobody eats brown bananas, they are vile and slimy,  but they taste wonderful in curry, especially with mango and yoghurt, or layered on top of the apple in pies.

My pot plants are a bit of an embarrassment generally.

All the same, I think a beautiful kitchen is about more than your horticultural skills and the enthusiasm with which your family eats the satsumas.

In the end, it occurred to me to look for Disney kitchens. This came up with some far more interesting and inspiring results.

Some of them were boring red and white affairs with pictures of Mickey Mouse, but one or two were ace. They were richly coloured and  gleaming, and I looked at them with new interest.

Mark got out of the shower before I had finished and said that the reason they looked wonderful was because somebody had not built them with second hand flood reclamation cupboards and planks out of the builders’ yard skip. Indeed, somebody had spent a very great deal of money on their wonderfulness.

One of them had a cooker hood, built of gorgeously carved ornate stone. I pointed this out to Mark, a trifle wistfully, but he was unmoved, and explained that he had got no intention whatsoever of trying to recreate it.

I thought perhaps we might, a little. I will keep you posted about that one.

The picture is Mark and his saw. He has been cutting up firewood today, as well as building a kitchen.

I am pleased to tell you that he still has all of his fingers.