4888/17808
I
think I might become a baby hairdresser. Phoebe had her first haircut today,
admittedly with a very affable lady who had some friendly advice and who gave
our daughter a chocolate coin and a certificate commemorating this momentous
event. But my daughter’s head, although massive for a baby of her age, is still
small and there wasn’t a huge amount of hair to cut and the experience cost us
£14. Even taking into account chocolate coins and printing certificates that
lady is on £75 an hour if she can get those babies on a conveyor belt.
We
got to keep a lock of her hair and I took Phoebe’s photo as the haircut was
happening, just so she has the option to do the art project that I would have
liked to have done, of having a picture of every hair cut I’ve ever had. And
she’s only had one pair of shoes so far, so I am on top of the “Walk A Mile In
My Shoes” project too.
After our lunch I
fetched my wife and myself a yoghurt each from the fridge (it just so happened there were a couple of yoghurts in there, I don't like them any more than any other dessert). I picked out a
teaspoon from the cutlery drawer and returned to the table. “Did you get a
spoon for me?” asked my wife. Thoughtlessly I hadn’t. Such a selfish error
could be the nail in the coffin for my already shaky marriage, so I said, “Of
course,” and handed her the one teaspoon.
“What
about you?” she asked.
“Don’t
worry, I like to eat yoghurts with a fork,” I lied.
“Eating
a yoghurt with a fork? I have to see this,” she said and sat back to watch.
I
fronted it out, picked up my dinner fork and began. It was easy enough to start
with. With lots of yoghurt on the fork-head, not much drips through the prongs,
but when the yoghurt became scarcer I’d be in trouble.
Necessity
is the mother of invention and as I got to the yoghurty dregs I spun my fork
around and used the end of the handle as a spoon. And it worked. I had made the
spoon obsolete and invented a new piece of cutlery. I called it the “for
yoghurt fork” or “fork” for short. It’s a fork you can use to eat yoghurt or
any gelatinous food, plus as an additional selling point, you can also use the
“fork” as a fork. Millions would buy it.
But
I wanted billions, so I set to work refining the “fork”. Using the handle as a
surface to eat off might be unhygienic, so I wondered about putting a bar at a
90 degree angle across the middle of the “fork” so it could be manipulated in a
similar way to a puppet.
But
wait! What if that bar was made out of a knife? And what if the handle of the
fork was replaced by an actual spoon? I would have invented a piece of cutlery
that would do all the jobs of three pieces of cutlery in one.
I
made a prototype by gaffer taping a knife across a fork and stuck a teaspoon on
the end and Eureka! Much better and more aesthetically beautiful than those
stupid all in one camping utensils you can get. I name it the knispork.
Why
have three thin spaces in your cutlery drawer, when you can have one really
wide one? The advertising copy was writing itself.
But
I wasn’t done yet. There was a lot of wasted space on my cutlery cross. On the
reverse blade of the knife, I could put a sharper edge ideal for cutting meat and
veg. Then on the knife handle could be replaced with a full sized spoon, or any
implement: an egg timer, a potato peeler, a whisk. I could make endless
varieties and the idiotic public would need to buy them all.
I
tried it out and as long as you were careful there was only a minimal chance of
losing a finger or an eye. In trying to cover up some teaspoon-based
selfishness I had created a kitchen revolution that would feed my family (in
every sense) for generations. I called it the Cutlery-ifix, because it was both
a fix for inconvenient multiple cutlery and quite like a crucifix (in fact if
you stuck a Jesus on the underside you could use if for one of those too – hang
it on the wall and you could free up your drawer-space entirely). And as I am
not religiously insensitive I would also have versions with a Buddha, a Moses
and you know, that Allan bloke on it instead. And one with no one at all on,
for atheists. They’d all have to be on a cross because of the basic design of
the item, but if you don’t want to think of your particular god being crucified
then just imagine they’re having a nice stretch on a strange bed.
You could
also further increase its multifunctionism by having a puppet attached on
the non-Jesus side. It’s the ideal portable eating kit for the religious
puppeteer. But other people can use it too. The religious figure and the
puppet would be optional. I am not an idiot.
What
if you need to hold down the food you’re cutting? Buy two Cutlery-ifixes and
fork the food with one and use the knife of the other. Simple.
I am the guest on this week's Adam Buxton podcast.
