Goodbye Old Kitchen

As I sit here typing, our old kitchen is being demolished. I can hear the chap downstairs chipping away at old tiles, unscrewing units from the walls and smashing the brick island into rubble. Most of our downstairs rooms are open plan so we have concocted a curtain to screen off the kitchen from the hall. The words ‘wind’ and ‘pissing in’ spring to mind.

We narrowly avoided divorce proceedings over the last two weekends, trying to clear out kitchen cupboards. We had a method of sorting into ‘keep’, ‘charity’, ‘recycling’ and ‘Newcastle’ piles but each time we emptied a cupboard, it necessitated finding space somewhere else in the garage, shed or house to store the clutter. This explains why Dougie fell out of the loft last weekend.

The Newcastle pile is an interesting one. Mum and a selection of aunties and cousins have shown interest in some soup bowls, serving dishes, numerous tea sets and three sets of curtains. I’m sure they have quite enough of their own chintzy crud already so I’m tempted to say this is an excellent example of taking coals to Newcastle.

We have decided to keep the Simpsons’ donut-maker (used once) and the ice-cream machine (twice) but have dispensed with the pasta maker (in reality a tiny mangle) and Le Saucier (the electric equivalent of a wooden spoon). The unused electric fondue set has had a temporary reprieve in that it has moved to the shed, which inevitably means it will eventually be thrown away in about five years time. It has joined the fish kettle and the microwave plate heater on kitchenware death row.

We have enough mugs to supply coffee for a national meeting of the W.I. so have sensibly decided to temporarily keep all the novelty ones (those which came with an Easter egg) to serve teas and coffees to the ‘men’ as they work. We will then do a bit of a Zorba to celebrate when it’s all finished.

The pantry was an embarrassment. Out-of-date lentils, Jamaican ginger cake and some fusty infused oils were summarily dispatched to the bin, along with a ton of fruity tea-bags and a few old bottles of unidentifed liqueurs which we might have slurped if we could have removed the tops.

As the kitchen is now out of action we have set up a catering area in the ‘posh room’. I’m rather proud of the fact that we have a coffee station and a buffet table complete with microwave. I’m thinking of turning it into a bijou B&B by having a basket of pastries, mini pots of jam and bowls of sliced fruit.

The novelty is bound to wear off.