Thursday 18th December
It was 1978 if memory serves, not as so often to obscure and confuse but to pin down the year. Joy(bells) and I were, so I believed, happily married and unaware of the approaching storm. We decided that the kitchen in our rented flat in Finchley needed upgrading. This was before the mad rush to buy and I thought we were in a lucky position, a controlled rent in a garden flat in a desirable part of London. We got a bank loan to pay for it, this was of course pre credit cards, and went to John Lewis who designed and built the new kitchen. Of course we would have new appliances, fitted cooker, and fridge and washing machine and tumble dryer and even a dishwasher. Then the saleman mentioned the very latest thing from America – a waste disposal unit. It was apparently a macerator fitted two or three inches under the kitchen sink plug hole and would literally eat up all food waste, yes even chicken bones, but you must be careful not to let cutlery slip down the plug hole as metal would cause a problem. Happily we agreed to the waste disposal unit too.
A couple of months later and the kitchen was delivered and fitted, and we were given a demonstration of the appliances. When it came to the waste disposal unit the man showed us the isolation switch on the other side of the kitchen. This was because if a spoon happened to slip down the thing and jam it you must isolate the power before attempting to clear the blockage, and the switch being on the other side of the room ensured that when you had your hand down the hole you couldn’t reach the switch and accidentally turn it on.
The thing worked quite well, but inevitably as the new plug hole was much larger spoons and forks kept slipping down and jamming it. One day one of my children tossed a wooden ice lolly stick in the sink and the machine jammed. I went over and isolated the power then put my hand in and tried to extricate the stick. In order to get your hand down the hole you had to make a point of it like an arrow and then open your hand in the larger space past the plug hole. As I had my hand inside the thing searching for the stick Joybells came into the kitchen and inadvertently flicked on the isolator. The machine started to whirr but luckiy the blades were stuck by the stick but could of course free themselves at any moment and proceed to macerate my hand. Realising this I splayed my fingers so they were above the blades and shouted to Joybells to switch the isolator off again. She panicked and ran out of the room leaving me hand inside the unit with fingers an inch away from the groaning blades. She came back a few minutes later and said sorry and switched the thing off and I retrieved my fingers. The lolly stick eventually worked its way through the machine but when it went wrong next time I didn’t bother repairing it. No wonder they never caught on.