THE microwaves sat in a long row, silent and inscrutable, and all looking pretty much the same apart from the price tags.
Due to the demise of The Empress I would have to buy one – but which one?
The Empress, in all her magnificence, had always somewhat overawed me – her Book of Rules was the size of the New Testament, and offered advice in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and a squiggly language that might have been Ancient Egyptian for all I knew.
However, I needed a microwave, and buy one I must, come hell or high water. I had prepared myself for making a judgement of Solomon – I had measured the dimensions of my dinner plate and the height of the potato boiling bowl, and more than that, I had a tape measure in my bag.
All I wanted was a microwave that heated things, so I started at the cheap end, but they were tiny – not suitable for cooking anything larger than a hamster!
I moved up the line and price range and took out my trusty tape measure. My plate would fit, but the further along I went the more complicated and expensive they got, and the less I felt that I would be able to cope with their complexities.
I gazed at the shining ranks glumly. I would have to make a decision. I turned over the price tags, and suddenly the decision became easy – A hundred and something euros?
I’m not paying that! I bought the second simplest and cheapest!
