She was frying eggs in my kitchen because the bricklayers were working on that dirty kitchen I had built especially for her. I thought I would not need one. Two cooks later, within a span of not even twelve months after my original cook left for health reasons, my pristine modular kitchen with its beautiful granite countertop was now the perfect model for a dirty kitchen. And Instead of that familiar soft scents of cinnamon, cardamom, and the sweet smell of pure vanilla exuding from Walter’s Viennese cakes and pastries in the oven, it is now the pungent smell of salty dried fish hanging in the air. No wonder the dogs keep on barking, and Walter wrinkling his nose all the time.

She used my treasured enameled skillet because “you didn’t like it when you saw me frying eggs in a wok,” she said. There were eight eggs to go – she was frying them one by one in that vast fucking wok. And I was expected to smile!

This morning it was two eggs at a time (oh, she learns swift!) The sound of the metal spatula scraping the enameled skillet made my skin crawl. There goes my treasured skillet! I gasped when she scooped the egg with her spatula and dashed into the other end of the counters. It was sheer acrobatic genius how she balanced the wobbly egg on her spatula without dropping it on the now greasy floor. Why the gasp? The small serving platter was on that far corner of the countertop; you have to make an effort to reach it. “Won’t life be easier if you perhaps hold the platter in one hand and the spatula in the other?” I asked, flashing a toothy smile.

It’s now 8.30 pm, and yet still not talking to me*. Well, time to buy that little fridge and radio my cook asked me the other day to go to the dirty kitchen. That would be my truce offering – the refrigerator because it exhausts her, she claims, darting in and out of the house for something like eggs; the radio to amuse her while working in the dirty kitchen – frying eggs!

December 16, 2014
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*now profoundly engrossed with her TV soaps