A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu

Matilda treated herself to a toasted sandwich maker today.  It has been a long felt want of hers for an age.  She is a very parsimonious child though, and unwilling to spend her money unless she feels that she has found something of great value to her.  Over the months that she has been longing for said sandwich toaster she has seen many, but none have been worthy enough in her eyes to merit their cost in pounds sterling. amd her purse has remained resolutely closed.

Until today.

Our kettle blew up today.  This was a tragedy and a crisis. Not only because we drink an extraordinary amount of hot beverages on our own account, but because we had the builders round to do the rendering this morning and they make our tea consumption pale into insignificance.  There were only two of them, and between the hours of seven this morning and one this afternoon they drank eighteen cups of tea between them.  Eighteen! 

So you see how terrible our crisis was. 

Jason rushed out to purchase a new kettle.  Tilly went with him and returned with a sandwich toaster which cost £6.  She was delighted.  Jason was also delighted, as he has very fond memories of baked bean and fried egg toasties from his dissipated teenage years.

I was quite pleased.  As a child, toasted sandwiches were one of the few things that I dreamed of being allowed to eat that actually turned out to be worth the parental pestering to get, unlike Findus crispy pancakes and Smash instant potato (yeurch).  My only concern was the cleaning.  I love a good toastie. I hate cleaning the toasted sandwich maker.  Tilly assured me that as it was her toasted sandwich maker she would do the cleaning of it.  She and Jason then entered into complicated dealings where she tried to charge him for the use of the sandwich maker and he countered with charges for the cost of running it on our electric bill.  Hmmm.

Agreement was settled by tea time when we forswore the delights of jacket potatoes for toasted sandwich wonders.

I have to confess that my cheese and onion toastie was lovely, and did indeed remind me of that fateful afternoon in my granny’s kitchen in about 1982 when I first burnt my mouth on the molten cheese inside my 5000 calorie sandwich and tasted the nectar of the gods.  In fact we all enjoyed the fillings of our choice with gusto. But I have never had such a protracted meal in my life.  Each sandwich took about ten minutes to make.  It would have been quicker, quite frankly, to have lit a candle under the bread and done it by hand.  Clearly a £6 sandwich toasting machine combined with Jason’s stringent costings for electrics have taken their toll.

Still, I didn’t have to cook, and Tilly was true to her word and actually cleaned the machine afterwards, much to my amazement.  Not only that but she remained un burned within and without and still has all her own hair.  I was quite impressed.

And my sandwich was much more tasty than a Madeleine.

I wonder if Proust would have preferred a toastie?  I bet he would.  It would have been a much better book had he yearned for a bean and egg toastie I think.

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