Something that might pop up from time to time...

I'm starting to get annoyed with toasters. I know that probably sounds silly and getting annoyed with pieces of kitchen equipment probably serves no useful purpose.

But I don’t care - I’m getting annoyed with toasters because, well, they never seem to work properly.

Okay I’m certain that there are brand new toasters that come out of the box and toast brilliantly and never give a day’s trouble and make brilliant toast.

But I’m beginning to wonder if the toaster I have has a mind of its own.

Making toast in that toaster is a bit like doing the lottery. Every now and then you might hit the jackpot, but more often that not you get toast that is too light (is that still just called bread) or you get a burnt offering of biblical proportions.

Both extremes have a level of annoyance attached to them that I’m sure lots of people can identify with.

Or maybe it’s just me?

Maybe I’m just a stoopid person who can’t really work a toaster properly, because ever since we first got our electric toaster many years ago, I can recall problems like this.

It wasn’t always like that. For a while when I was way younger than I am now I remember we used to make our toast on a grill. This was not without its share of problems as far as I can recall either.

You see whatever about the electric toaster’s decision (too light or too dark) most of the time it does at least pop the toast out.

I say most of the time because I have been known to have toasters that didn’t pop - or to have toasters that did pop but not just the thickly sliced bread that I was putting into them.

But under the grill, now that was a whole different ball game. Under the grill means that somebody has to watch the toast.

They need to keep a constant eye on the bread under the hot grill to make sure it has reached its appropriate level of readiness.

When I was younger and we were all getting ready for school in the morning, one of us would usually be assigned that task.

Problems however arose when that person calculated that it would take, say a minute and fifty five seconds for one side of the bread to toast - just enough time to run up the stairs and get their shoes.

But you know that school shoes are never to be found in pairs and once upstairs the search for the lost shoe would run way over the one minute and 55 seconds. The toast watcher would usually be alerted to this by either the waft of burning toast spiraling up the stairs, or the roar of angry brothers or sisters who had stumbled on the inferno, battled bravely to extinguish the flames and then let the shoe searcher have it both barrels for neglecting their post. (or their toast for that matter!)

The arrival in the house of a new electric toaster might not have been as big an event as say the arrival of colour television, but it was going to give everybody time to search for their shoes, finish their homework or queue for the bathroom without fear that the toast would be burned.

Well in theory it would, but the reality came very quickly and soon we discovered that the toaster often spat the bread out as, well bread, or as black as the shoe you’d just spent a minute and 65 seconds searching for.

Which brings me back to the plight of my current toaster. While I am now pretty certain that the buttons for deciding on what level of toasting you required are being moved by persons unknown in the house – I nevertheless searched for a manual to see if there might be some other reason.

Instead the manual just told me things like - never stick a fork into the toaster when it is plugged in! And never operate a toaster submerged in liquids.

Really folks, come on now, surely everybody knows that would just make the toast all soggy!

In the end I’ve decided that I’m just going to have to live with the way toasters work – or don’t as the case may be.

And I guess the fact that they annoy me is something that will just pop up every now and again…