Free Pond: Stories by Claire-Louise Bennett Page A

read, my musings on eventualities shifted out of an ineffective theoretical mode and I found myself taking a very practical view of the situation actually, which prompted me, first of all, to make a note of, and then carry out some research upon, the manufacturers of my decrepit cooking device.
    Belling of course is the main exponent of mini-kitchens and I’m quite certain that when I lived in an attic near the hospital several years ago it was kitted out with a classic Belling model. Belling, by the way, are an English firm which makes complete sense to me because two-ring ovens are synonymous with bedsits and bedsits are quintessentially English in the same way that B&Bs are evocative of a certain kind of grassroots Englishness. One thinks of unmarried people right away, bereft secretaries and threadbare caretakers, and of ironing boards with scorched striped covers forever standing next to the airing-cupboard door at the end of the hallway. And saucepans with those thin bases of course which burn so easily, and a stoutish figure probing back and forth in the effluvial steam with a long metal spoon. And laundry always, hanging off everything and retaining the shape always of those ongoing elbows and steadfast knees and dug in heels. And coasters for some reason, and things from aboard, Malta for example, that were bought second-hand from somewhere close by, and a special rack for magazines and a special rack for ties. And nail scissors in the bathroom, poised on the same tile always, the same white tile like a compass needle always, always pointing the same way, always pointing towards the grizzled window. And extractor fans and skittish smoke alarms and bunged-up tin openers and melon scoops and packet soup, and a Baby Belling oven. You couldn’t kill yourself with a Baby Belling I shouldn’t think because as far as I know they are all powered by electricity and no doubt this specification was utterly deliberate because Belling would have been quite aware of the sorts of customers their product would invariably cater to and the sorts of morbid tendencies these people might brood over and wish to act upon and finally bring to completion.
    In any case, gigantic joints of meat notwithstanding, there’s not much room in a Baby Belling oven so I should think the possibility of comfortably shoving one’s head into it is pretty slim.
    I certainly couldn’t get my head into my cooker without getting a lot of grease on the underside of my chin for example— and it stinks in there. It stinks of carbonisation I suppose and that’s only to be expected because I’ve never cleaned it out, not once; I just don’t feel there’s much point if you must know. It’s not even a Belling, as it turns out; it’s a Salton, whoever they are. The name strikes me as dubious—downright chimerical actually—and my hopes for acquiring replacement control knobs start to etiolate and turn prickly and I know, as I lift up the mirror so that I can get to the back of the oven and find the model number, that this oven doesn’t really exist any longer and this is just a fat waste of time and the persistence with which I am trying to remain undaunted by these two facts means that either I am uncommonly desperate for a concrete diversion or that my typical inexcusably blasé attitude towards most things is starting to make me feel sort of panicky and ought not be allowed free rein over nearly everything any longer. I make a note of the model number which is on a sticker, one corner of which is peeling away from the oven. There are bits attached to the underside of the label where it’s come unstuck and on the place where it was which must mean there’s still some stickiness in both areas and as such I wonder how they ever came apart. The number is something like 92711, but I don’t suppose I remember exactly, probably the digits are prefixed by two capital letters, but I have no idea what they are either. This is not an occasion to formulate