“Coffee?” I asked
Dad last week as he sat on the sofa, dog on his lap. He nodded. I had just picked him up from hospital after
surgery to remove a bladder tumor. He had been in a hospital bed for almost a
week and was not himself at all.
He had bled more
then he should have done, refused pain killers and anti-inflammatories (for his
own peculiar reasons), he had missed his beloved dog terribly and was now home,
on the sofa, looking a little worse for wear.
I went into Dad’s
kitchen and looked at his kettle. It’s a white plastic kettle, about fifteen
years old and the bone of much contention between my father and I. He he lives in an area where the water is
hard and as a result, limescale in kettles and pipes is a huge problem.
I took the lid off
and looked inside. Big flakes of limescale floated on the surface of the water
and lumps of it stuck to the sides of the kettle. It was disgusting and surely,
not right that anyone should be drinking from it at all. If limescale can
irriversibly damage a dishwasher, my mind boggles at what it’s doing to Dad’s
insides.
Most people
dissolve kettle limescale with tablets that can be bought easily in a
supermarket. I bought Calgon tablets for Dad several years ago but he refused
to use them and threw them away. “I like my kettle like it is” was his comment
as he sipped on a mug of coffee with white lumpy clouds floating around in it.
So last year, for
Christmas, I went and did something totally ridiculous. I bought him a new
kettle with matching toaster. The other bone of contention between us is that
when he comes to Ireland, he loves nothing more than a bit of hot buttery
toast. Yet, in his own kitchen, he hasn’t a toaster.
“I’m not using
either of them. You may as well keep them yourself,” he told me at the time. I
laughed and said that I did not need another kettle or toaster and that he
should keep them and enjoy a slice of toast in his own home alongside a cup of
clean coffee.
So last week, as
he sat dozing in the front room, I decided to have a poke around the kitchen
and hunt for the shiny new kettle. It didn’t take me long to find it. Tucked
away in the cupboard under the stairs, still in the box, alongside it, the
toaster. I took out both. First I unwrapped the kettle, half filled it with
water and switched it on.
Dad woke from his
doze. “I know what you are doing in there!” he barked. “You have got that new
kettle out haven’t you? Well I’ll have coffee made with my kettle thank you
very much”.
This was the
reaction that I had anticipated. He is from a generation who were taught to
‘mend and make do’. He survived the war where his mother fed a family of six on
what she grew in the garden and little more than one egg a week.
That I should come
along and throw aside a dirty, scaly kettle that can still boil water is a
crime in his mind. As for the toaster, that’s nothing more than new fangled
technology like microwave ovens and metal detectors.
“You can take the
kettle home with you”. With Ryanair’s new passenger friendly policy of two bags
per person I could carry it home but what was the point? I explained that I had a perfectly good
kettle at home already. “SO DO I!” he snapped grumpily.
I did the right
thing and switched on his old kettle too. I watched the two kettles as they
came to the boil side by side. I poured water from his kettle into a mug for
him and from the new kettle, poured water into a mug for me.
Then I unwrapped
the toaster and plugged it in. I had expected him to shout again but he
remained silent. I put in two slices of bread and pushed down the lever. A few
minutes later the kitchen was filled with the aroma of toast.
I found his
favourite plate (at least thirty years old, chipped with the 1970’s flower
design washed away) and put the toast onto it. Then I spread butter onto the
toast, put it onto a tray beside the cloudy coffee and headed into the front
room.
“Toast!” I
announced. He took the dog from his lap and put the tray there instead. He
picked up a slice and bit into it with a crisp crunch. I drank my limescale free
tea and watched as he ate every bit. I may have lost the kettle battle but at
least he might be coming round to the idea of a toaster.
As I was getting
ready to leave a few days later, Dad came into the kitchen and started looking
in the cupboards. “Where have you put the box and wrapping for that kettle?” he asked. I found it in
the cupboard under the stairs and handed to him. He packed up the kettle and
hid it away again until next time I visit.
Then he looked at
the toaster that I had used to toast his bread, crumpets, teacakes and bagels.
“Dad, why don’t you keep the toaster out? It’s only a toaster?” “Because I’ve managed without a toaster for
seventy years and I don’t need one now” he said.
“But it’s so easy
to use! You love toast!” I tried to convince him to keep it out and not box it
away. Then the dog started barking, he
got distracted and I left for home. I
put his fast recovery from surgery down to hot buttery toast. But is the
toaster on the counter now? I doubt it.
It would be easier
to teach his old dog new tricks.
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