agape

i'm not sure when my mum bought her aga. i think it was when we moved into this house, so... sometime after 1990. i can't remember not having one. it's quite an odd appliance to grow up with, though naturally at the time it felt as much of our family of furniture as the various cats. i did realise at some point in my teens that it is something of a status symbol for the rural middle classes (along with range rovers, shotguns and golliwogs), which is odd given that i grew up on state benefits in an ex-dockyard town. but there's nothing wrong with being aspirational, right? right.

there are no buttons and there's only one dial (and i don't know what it does). it's just on, all of the time, and has indeed been on for all of that time. it heats the kitchen and a lot of the house--especially my old bedroom, which sits directly above. living in a draughty old victorian house with single-glazed windows obviously requires some kind of decent central heating--and what better method than installing a big lumpy hot thing to sit smack back in the middle of it.*

not exactly energy efficient, no, but i like to think we made up for that by never, ever flying. (which, yes, i have in turn also made up for. er.)

of course, i like to think a lot of things. usually, i don't think very much. and growing up with such a useful and yet remarkably useless appliance has certainly shaped my thought in unflattering ways. i don't, for example, think anything about gas marks. i barely know how to use a microwave, grill or sandwich maker. and there's the apocraphyl story of how, while staying at the band house in oxford, i cheerfully filled up an electric kettle with water, turned on the hob, and ... yeah, you know where this is going. it only took a minute or two for the kitchen to be filled with toxic black smoke, and we had pretty much had to evacuate the house immediately to avoid a round of tracheostomies. (i hesitated to point out the irony of heavy smokers worrying about inhalation of toxic fumes).

and what are agas bad for? sponges, souffles, omelettes--anything that requires a specific high or low temperature. and what are they good for? toast.

see: they're really, really good for toast.

reason being: you can slap the bread down on the hob, add whatever you want, put the lid down, and walk off, ideally walking back in time for everything to be at that perfect place between squishy and crispy. that's about it. no need to think, and no need to fuss. delicious cheese on toast, just like mum used to make (and, er, still does).

it's not quite breakfast, but then i did get out of bed four hours late.

agape**.

*don't answer that question.

**defined by paulo coehlo as "the love that consumes," i.e., the highest and purest form of love, one that surpasses all other types of affection.