I came home on Thursday after a really horrible day in the office – I do that office-thing once a week, and mostly have quite good days, but last Thursday was the worst – after drinks with a new and delightful work colleague (who lives in an actual haunted house) and after going straight to drinks and delicious dinner at the most stylish and cool new neighbour’s flat without popping home first. It was late and dark when i did get back, but my wifely sense knew as I walked through the door that something was different. Something smelt different. The air was altered somehow. My instincts took me straight to the kitchen bench where an industrial-sized deep fryer lay, still warm, still shiny from its newness but with an undeniable oily film from recent fryer-y usage.

This was a big shock. Deep fryers have been a dangerous conversation for us for many years. A trigger. A bruise. A marital landmine. Mark has been wanting a deep fryer for a very long time to make chips, but I have always told him a firm no. Chips aren’t good for you – heck, deep fryers are the opposite of good for you – and it would never have just stopped at chips, would it? It would become a bit of a deep frying odyssey, a challenge, an adventure fun park where the only limits to the deep frying would be Mark’s imagination.

For me, I have always found that chopping up potatoes and roasting them in olive oil and salt with perhaps some rosemary sprigs or garlic cloves thrown is makes a perfectly delicious chip supper, but Mark has been hankering for something more. More hot, more stainless steely, more girth, more deep fried.

Issues with the deep fryer

Size: The new deep fryer is the size of a deep fryer that a shop/cafe might need, probably able to feed hundreds of people many portions of hot chips. I think Mark is very attracted to commercial kitchen implements because he spent so many years in a stainless steel butchery and had access to top of the range stainless steels things. He also generally likes buying top of the range things and he likes them as large as is possible. This, in a small 2 bedroomed flat, was always going to be a fundamental problem. It takes up the entire draining board and its box (“gotta keep the box!”) sits between the kitchen table and the couch which blocks the much-needed flow.

Smell: The other thing, which I think is a real problem, is the way that deep fryers make your flat smell and feel like a fish and chip establishment. Without proper ventilation, the oil spits out in tiny droplets and settles on your hair, your skin, your artwork, your books, your kids and your dog. Probably your shoes in the hallway and into the fabric of the couch. Into the apples on the bench, perhaps, and all over the photos blue-tacked onto the kitchen cupboards. It gives you spots. It makes your clothes clammy and fuggy. If I didn’t have my three Chanel jackets safely stored away in my bedroom wardrobe, the oil would probably turn the fantasy tweed into a clammy webby mess.

Storage: The deep fryer also needs a lot of oil which should be filtered through some sort of funnel/muslin situation to be reused once all the chips have been made. Mark went off to Portobello Road market on Saturday purely to find an antique glass flagon to keep the recycled oil in. Needless to say, he didn’t find one.

Do you see the problem?

So on Thursday night I went straight into our bedroom where the lights were out and Mark was in bed, in his sleeping pose. I asked in a fairly unwhispery voice “Why is there a deep fryer here?’ and he rolled right around to face me (because he was clearly expecting/fearing this interrogation) and quite firmly said (with stainless steel in his voice) “Let’s not get into this now.”

Lines were drawn, I tell you.

So. The upshot is that we had a LOT of fried goods over the weekend and people (men) came around to admire the deep fryer, some even bringing frozen things to deep fry in it. The women were all uniformly disgusted. I refused to eat anything from the silver slimy beast, and I wouldn’t touch any of its silvery bits that looked like they were threatening to burn me and the children very badly, forever. Or just electrocute us. I also said that it couldn’t live in the kitchen, and nor could the flagon/oil containers, and that the whole repulsive contraption must instead live a few streets away in our storage. When it was frying, I hid in the bedroom, and when I came out later I opened all of the windows and doors and turned on the loud extractor fan (doesn’t work) and complained about how slick the surfaces now were. I commiserated the boys on their new acne and sniffed their hair sadly, urging them to go and have another wash. The bowls of chips got increasingly left to cool and dry up as everyone got sick of the same oily taste. Once Mark stuck sausages in the vat to cook, the oil just got confused and murkier and meatier and probably cancerous.

I tried to tell Mark that going against the few rules in our marriage pretty much stinks. I said “I know how much you hate tattoos, but what if I came home with one?” and he rolled his eyes and said this was entirely different, and besides, he had owned the deep fryer for years and had just hidden it in the storage until he felt safe to spring it on us all.

Was he safe? No. Did we have a good weekend? No. Will I ever get the oil off? No.

Anyway, the fruitless flagon search thing may have been the last straw for him because the deep fryer has been packed away back into the deep dark recesses of the storage along with the huge hamburger maker, the hamburger plastic packaging laminating machine, the sausage maker et al. I am meanwhile much happier now that I have a draining board back. I think the matter is closed for now.

Photos of my beloveds

Remi on World Book Day

Otis too – they were both dressed as words. Otis was ‘incognito’ and Remi was ‘broom’

Mother’s Day still from the Dove shoot ten years ago. Can’t keep this hidden away:

Boys on a Mother’s Day rainy trip to Cliveden:

Pub quiz team:

Delightful Casper turned 16:

Easter Egg hunt in a suit:

More pub quiz shenanigans:

Dorks on a fake beach: