Forgotten Objects of Desire – No. 43 – The Teasmaid

Monday 15th December

Hard to believe now but a Teasmaid was THE thing we all wanted back in the seventies.  Our houses were cold, no central heating and having to get out from under the covers and into a freezing cold kitchen to make tea was unbearable.  So the very idea of a machine that made you tea without you getting out of bed was just the thing.  Looking back we had very few electronic gadgets at all, many of us didn’t even have fridges; every high street had a launderette because most people didn’t have a washing machine; colour TV had arrived in ’68 but many were still watching in black and white; no computers, no mobile phones – in fact most people had no house phone even.  My parents had a Teasmaid first, and maybe they even bought me mine, or else I had seen theirs and wanted one.

There were several models but all worked on the same principle, a kettle on a rocker board with a tube leading out of the kettle and into the teapot.  When the teapot was full it tipped the rocker and switched the kettle off and a light on.  Some models even had a radio switching on when your tea was ready.  You had to fill the kettle up and set the clock and put the tea-leaves in the pot the night before, oh and put the milk on the milk jug and a cup or if you had a friend two cups on the tray.  The trouble was that the blessed thing made so much noise boiling the water that you were awake five minutes before the tea was ready.  I used to be sitting up watching the thing and cursing that it took so long to make a cup of tea.  And the milk might have gone off in the night too; longlife milk hadn’t been invented either.   I used it for a few Saturdays and Sundays, workdays I was just too busy to be mucking about with it, but it used to annoy me so much I gave up in the end.

I cannot imagine anyone using one now, but they are probably still made and like electric blankets have been consigned to the electronic sin-bin of History, only used by diehard old age pensioners.  Strange to think we were all so in awe of them and that we wanted what was nothing more than a combi-alarm clock and kettle.