by Joshua Bayes

Created on: May 20, 2008   Last Updated: December 18, 2009

Textual Relations

There are some things about my mother's kitchen that I like: It is the place where, historically, she has prepared delicious, hearty food for her hungry brood. I am alive and healthy because of that wonderful room. Also, it is remarkably functional and efficient; it has knives and forks and all the varieties of crockery and cutlery you could need but nothing more. Therefore it is possible to go about the business of cookery without having your hand squished by the 'trash compactor', or prepare a lovely meal within its confines without slipping over the contemporary, hexagonal-shaped tiles, which cost a small fortune to buy and a large fortune to maintain through the essential health insurance costs.

There are, naturally, some things about my mother's kitchen that I also dislike: The fact that it achieved this sturdy functionality through a frighteningly thorough sacrifice of all possible elegance, for example. Or the bin. I hate bins.

There is, however, one thing about my mother's kitchen that I simply love: 'The Drawer'.

Now, there are several drawers in mum's kitchen, but only one 'The Drawer'. I have no idea whether other kitchens around the country, or even world, have 'The Drawer', but I'd be willing to place a small wager on the fact that they do. It is the drawer that my dear mother has spent years unknowingly creating and perfecting through her simple want for a tidy house. And whenever, whilst cleaning, she comes across something to which she cannot assign ownership, or something which doesn't have a 'place', it inevitably ends up in 'The Drawer'.

"Mum, do you know where my bike pump is?"
"I'm not sure darling, have a look in the drawer."

"Mum, have we got any paper clips?"
"I don't know love, try the drawer".

You know 'The Drawer'.

And it was in 'The Drawer', whilst searching recently for a battery, or a box of matches, or a ratchet spanner, or a needle and cotton, or the pet hamster I lost in 1989, that I came across an object which has only recently appeared in the drawer, but which seems to have propagated faster than rabbits, giving birth to smaller and smaller offspring and a never-ending tangle of confused wiring; my old mobile phone.
I speculatively pressed the power button and, surprisingly, it twinkled into existence. It didn't flicker or flash, and there was no obnoxious, space-age sound or flashy graphic announcing its arrogant arrival, it simply twinkled, with a gentle humility, into life. 15 years of technical evolution

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