Marital Conversations (80)

C is in the kitchen, preparing lunch (eat-ups and burgers) for 6 of us. I come in to sort out cooking my veggie burger only to find that the oven is on the wrong temperature (because it is cooking oven chips). 

No problem - it can go under the grill with the beef burgers; the grill pan is big enough for it not to get meaty splashes on it. But when I pull out the grill pan the burgers are sitting on a pan-sized length of aluminium foil!

M: What's the point of that?! I can't put my burger on there!

C: I hate cleaning the grill pan.

M: Well I don't mind doing it!

At this point I, perhaps ill advisedly given the situation, decide to give C some friendly open feedback.

M: You know there's a finite amount of aluminium on the planet don't you? 

M: What will humans do when it runs out?!

I hunt around for a baking tray for my veggie burger to go in the oven and try to estimate a reduced time for the increased oven temperature.

This seems an opportune time to provide further feedback, as I can see an empty beans can with the top completely removed and nowhere to be seen.

M: And why do you never recycle the tops of cans?!!!

Oddly I don't get the expected "Thank you for your feedback... I will take this on board in future", but C seems to be considering carefully the important points I've just made. By now the fat from the beef burgers has pooled on the foil and is starting to smoke under the hot grill element. The fan in the oven hood is whirring away working overtime. C moves the grill pan to a lower shelf but this doesn't help and the kitchen is now filling up with smoke. I start to offer some useful advice when...

C: SHUT THE FUCK UP!

...just as 10-year-old grandson O appears in the kitchen doorway. Horrified, he flees back to the living room to tell his mum what he has just heard. (He did let slip that this was not the first time he had heard the F word and mum and dad were suspiciously vocal in suggesting it must have been at school...)

M: I'll open the window. You'd better make some holes in the foil so the fat can drain away...