The day got off to a disastrous start. Only a month or so ago I had made an impulse purchase on Amazon of a
Bodum 1446 Latteo Milk Frother. It's a long name for quite a simple device, but I like to imagine there are 1445 other versions of the device on the market place. But basically it allows you to froth up milk to make your own lattes at home, provided you also have some kind of espresso making machine - which I do. I hadn't been using it much though, because it wasn't any good at milk frothing. The Bodum thing, which involved heating the milk in the microwave and then whisk it up with a plunger affair. It's simple, but brilliantly effective and in the last four weeks I have perfected both microwave timing and degree of whippage and was making perfect credit-crunch-busting lattes at home at a tenth of the price that they'd cost at Caffe Ritazza, with no gigantic looming faces of beautiful women to tempt me into fantasy love affairs, apart from the ones that I stole from Caffe Ritazza and have all over my house.
The jug, I had noted when I first got it, is made of very fragile looking glass, but only an idiot or a baby wouldn't be able to look after a glass jug without smashing it into pieces.
I am a baby idiot.
I made the best latte I had every made for breakfast and was considering opening up my own cafe and start coining it in. Andrew Collings was coming over to record our review of the year podcast (which will be available on New Year's Eve) and I know he likes lattes. So I washed up the jug and put it to drain by the sink.
A few minutes later in an uncharacteristic attempt to tidy up I decided to load the dishwasher. I needed to wash a bowl with day old dried Weetabix on it by hand, so caked was the day old dried Weetabix and so reached for the washing up, which was on my drying up rack. I accidentally knocked the rack a bit as I reached and it toppled a baking tray which in turn dominoed into the fragile bodum jug and the force of gravity did the rest. Before I could even dive to my right to rescue it with my excellent wicket keeping skills (alas untested for almost a quarter of a century), the jug had collided with my kitchen tiles and there was only going to be one casualty in this battle. The floor came off unscathed, my magical bodum jug, which I love more than any other object or person that I have ever met, was in pieces. I know I can get another one, and believe me, I will, but even so it was horrible to see such a beloved new friend smashed beyond repair due to my own stupidity. I loved it more than I would love my own children and this is probably a good reason why I shouldn't have any kids of my own. I'd just leave them on the draining board and then cause them to fall to the ground after a chain of slapstick events. And you can't just get another kid from Amazon (not yet). Or gather up a broken one with a dust pan and brush and then wrap it in newspaper and throw it in the bin.
The moral to this story is never love anything. Your heart (and it) will only be broken.
To add insult to injury Collings (who had bought his own coffee at Costa anyway, making my whole washing up procedure unnecessary) had brought me a Christmas present which I opened "live" on the podcast. You may remember that I gave him a present worth almost a hundred pounds (and it doesn't matter that I got it cheaper than that - it is the RRP which is all that counts), which was also really massive (which is all that really counts at Christmas - size IS important).
Well Collings gave me a present so shit and offensive and tiny that I could not hide my fury and disappointment. And believe me I didn't. I would rather he had sliced off my testicles, put them in a Bodum 1446 Latteo Milk Frother, put them in a microwave for two minutes, then pumped them up with the milk frother pump and served them up to me in a spunky, bloody, gristly latte.
To find out what he got me you will have to download the podcast in a week or so. Or if you can't be bothered just look at the picture which will come up on Andrew's site when the podcast is live, when you will be able to see the gift in all its rubbish glory.
I am seriously considering not carrying on with the podcast, such is the disparity between the gifts we have given. But that would just be playing into Collings hands and mean that my gift would also be useless. So I will carry on, through gritted teeth.
And if you think I've been a bit harsh to Collings once you've heard the podcast then do remember that I was coping with a serious bereavement.
But do buy your own Bodum 1446 Latteo Milk Frother. It is the greatest invention of the 21st century.
