Kitchen & Morality

I wrote this for Comment Is Free yesterday.

"We’re having our kitchen done: an extension and full refit. The reason is to enable the whole of my immediate family – me, my wife and six children – to at last sit down to a meal at the same time without inadvertently (usually it’s inadvertent) elbowing each other, or whoever is hemmed in next to the sink unit being unable to leave the table except by crawling out past peoples’ feet. Also, the old fittings and appliances are crocked. We can afford it without borrowing recklessly. So far, so straightforward. Yet certain spending decisions have got me coiled up in agony.

Reader, have you ever loved a domestic appliance? Here I open my trembling heart. Who could not have feelings for the Mercury range cooker, available in pumice, olivine and – sigh – mist, or yearn for the steely capaciousness of the Fisher and Paykel Classic Fridge-Freezer? Oh, but flinch at the price of them! For these two items alone I’d get little change out of five grand. A quarter of that amount would buy a pretty good big cooker and our present fridge-freezer works fine. Who, though, puts a price tag on desire? I want the Mercury Range Cooker! I must have the Fisher and Paykel Classic! So how could the outlay be justified?