sitting in the kitchen

The Systems Administrator is out for the day, meeting with an old friend for a walk and a curry. The SA made sure yesterday to leave me with a plentiful supply of sawn logs and instructions about which were dry and which unseasoned so that I could mix them in the stove.  It was a kind thought, but in practice I haven't used either, because I haven't lit the stove.  I was busy doing things, and then I was happy to sit at the kitchen table until it was time for Wolf Hall, and the electric heater took the chill off the study for the hour.  Now I'm back in the kitchen.

We differ fundamentally in our attitude to sitting in the kitchen.  I like settling down at the kitchen table.  The AGA is warm, the kettle close to hand, the table is generally less cluttered than my desk and more comfortable for using my laptop than my lap is.  The chairs are solid wood but shaped so as not to cut off the circulation to one's nether regions.  On a wet or frosty day I can sit here for hours.  The SA finds it slightly strange and pitiful that I haven't bothered to light a stove, and never sits at the kitchen table for longer than it takes to drink a mug of tea mid afternoon, mealtimes excepted.

The difference probably dates back to our childhoods.  The kitchen in the house where I grew up had an AGA, an anthracite fired one that required stoking twice daily and covered everything in a fine layer of dust.  In the depths of winter it was the only warm room in the house during the day, until we had the fire lit in the evening, and sitting round the kitchen table seemed a natural thing to do.  It was not an Elizabeth David style wooden table but a table of its times, wood pattern formica with an extending section that slotted away underneath when not required, but the effect was cosy.  Kitchens appeared to me to be a place to hang out.

The System Administrator's mother's kitchen had a breakfast bar, if I remember correctly, but I'm not sure that many meals were eaten there apart from breakfast.  The kitchen was definitely the SA's mother's domain, and I never got the impression her husband and sons were encouraged to hang around in it.  This functional view of the kitchen seems to have pursued the SA into adulthood.  But it might simply be that the SA's back is worse than mine, and the wooden chairs less bearable.

We do have a pine table, courtesy of my brother, who was going to banish his old dining table to the garage after buying a swanky new glass topped one when I bummed it off him.  It was a fair exchange, since I'd just spent half the week surveying the garden of his new house and drawing up a design and planting plan for him.  It is rather more scratched and battered than when it was his dining table, but it's better for it to be used than sitting in a garage.  We held off getting a table for years, convinced it would be in the way as we moved from cooker to sink to fridge, but once we had it I was amazed we hadn't got one long before.  One corner has warped slightly, so that the fourth leg doesn't quite touch the floor.  When we got the table it had a piece of cardboard taped to the foot, and after a decade in our ownership the short leg is still resting on a small offcut of oak flooring.  It's only inconvenient when you wash the floor and the offcut goes walkabout.