Tea

Getting ready to prepare myself yet another cup of lemon and honey black tea on this frigid afternoon, I reflected on the marvelous invention that is the electric kettle. It boils five cups of water in under three minutes and shuts off automatically when the water has reached a boil. For as long as I can remember living in a townhouse in Chesterfield Mews, I can recall the shrill sound of a kettle whistling belligerently while all of my family members sat in their rooms waiting for some one else to get it. "Mooomm the kettle is boiling!!" Inevitably, the whistling eventually faded to pitiful, breathy sighs and then, the kettles stopped producing sound at all. You see, tea has always been an institution in my house and any kettle that came into our kitchen was heartily plopped onto the stove approximately ten times a day, often to be forgotten. You can only imagine that this led to a few potentially dangerous incidents, which, when I think of them now, make me laugh.

Now we have an electric kettle.