The Littlest Kitchen in the World
Kitchen Little was worried that the (artex) ceiling might fall on her head
Yesterday I had another appointment at the retirement flat I’m due to move into in four weeks’ time. FOUR WEEKS1!
This appointment was to meet a local kitchen wizard to see what magic they might be able to perform in turning the Littlest Kitchen In The World2 into something which won’t make me want to hurl, or hurl myself out of the nearest window every time I so much as think of needing to use the room.
I use the word ‘room’ loosely. It’s less a room and more a closet involving a sink and hob.
This kitchen is so small3 that only one person can be inside it at a time.
This kitchen is so small4 you don’t enter it, instead a realisation slowly dawns that you’re not in the living room anymore; one foot has accidentally stepped into this afterthought of an ante-room.
Dear Reader, my heart sinks every time I visit what—in four weeks—will become my new home, because of this teeny, tiny area tagged onto the lovely, long living room. (The living room is the part of the flat which captured me enough to see myself moving there).
Thankfully, there are double doors with Georgian bars and wavy squares of glass which shut off the kitchen from the lovely long living room so, when they’re closed, I could always pretend the kitchen of my dreams is secreted behind them. Perhaps when I sit at my desk-cum-table which I already know I will site at the living room window, I might be able to conjure a fantasy world lying in wait for me behind the wavy glassed double doors which currently conceal the Littlest Kitchen In The World.
There’s always a compromise to be made in whatever decision we make in life, and The Littlest Kitchen In The World is the one I’m making with this move.
When I was younger, I had a fantasy kitchen which I briefly had the pleasure of calling my own. It was in a cottage I’d also fantasised about living in, and the kitchen was unfitted. All the furniture was knotty pine. A bookcase sat beside the racing green range cooker (another fantasy) which held recipe books, pans, teapots and various other kitchen accoutrements. A long chest of drawers filled one wall, pot cupboards standing along its top. A Welsh dresser at the end of the 23-foot long room displayed blue willow plates and cups—something I’d enjoyed collecting—and a huge, 8-seater pine table and chairs took centre-stage.
I loved it. I loved it so much that I didn’t even hate cleaning it. I washed the floor once a week with a real life mop and bucket, and afterwards, I’d stand back to admire it the way women in 1950s adverts did. I didn’t take my fantasy kitchen for granted. I have always been aware of good fortune when it comes my way, because it appears so infrequently. However I didn’t know I was masking autism and ADHD at the time, so this constant need to adhere to what I assumed was a wife and mothers’ best feature i.e. making a house a home, was perhaps more performative than was healthy in a fledgling marriage.
If Instagram had been around at the time I’d have produced a steady stream of kitchen pictures. Most of these images would have featured my darling girl, some including the three girls who lived next door, dotted about in a gangly mess around the huge pine table and either creating culinary delights or delivering artistic masterpieces. Did I say I loved it? Sometimes I’d stand back and watch whatever was happening in this kitchen as though observing a dream in reality, not wishing to interrupt its natural flow by being too present (an autistic trait) in disturbing the perfection of it all.
Ma Walton, her kitchen and her brood had been a goal at one point, and I did actually feel a little like Ma Walton during that part of my life - even though three of the girls who regularly swarmed about weren’t mine. The kitchen was the heart of any home, and I considered myself lucky to have this beating presence at my disposal. In fact, I had it all: a handsome husband who loved his job, a beautiful daughter who I was determined would grow up with all the love and support I’d missed out on, and all beautifully parcelled within my dream cottage including my dream kitchen.
But oh, how mighty was the fall…
I don’t want to dwell on The Fall, though. Or rather ‘That Fall’. Because my life is littered with lots of Falls. Niagara being my middle name5.
Now, every time I re-visit what will become my new—hopefully last—home, I am taken aback by the size—or lack—of the kitchen. I’m fortunate, however, that I always visit with my Wingman who buffs a shine on the dullest of things. I don’t know how I would have coped during the past few months if he hadn’t found it in his heart to forgive my past indiscretions which meant an absence from one another’s lives for two years (a whole other story if anyone’s interested in a post featuring this…). And so yesterday, because our sole intention was to focus on The Littlest Kitchen In The World, we strode through the lovely long living room, straight to it, where I gasped once more.
“My God, it’s shrunk again!” I groaned.
“It hasn’t. You’re just remembering it differently.” (See the shine?)
“No, it was definitely bigger last time. Someone’s taken more units out. It can’t be this small!”
“It’s perfectly serviceable. Perhaps look at it as a kitchenette.”
“But kitchenettes are for caravans, not a place people are meant to cope with permanently! They’re for looking back on fondly, ridiculing how useless and cramped they are, making you grateful for NOT having to navigate them during the other 50 weeks of the year. I can’t believe I said yes to this. What the f*ck was I thinking?”
At this point I’d dearly liked to have slumped in a heap on the nearest piece of furniture, but as there isn’t any, my innards slumped on my body’s behalf.
I could have wept. I could weep every time I go there and stumble across it. Let’s just hope that my Kitchen Wizard comes up with some ideas to not only make it look more appealing, but also easier to use bearing in mind my limited physical capabilities which will only worsen with age.
A good idea in the meantime would be to focus on the rest of the flat, which has many pros, some of which I’ve mentioned here before. The lovely long living room, for instance, which although does appear smaller whenever we visit (my mind must use one of those panoramic lenses, the same ones the estate agents use) is a place large enough to function as a sitting/tv room with a dining/desk writing area at the dreaded kitchen end where the windows overlook the beautifully maintained grounds and back gardens of quaint old houses and rooftops which I focused rather more on than the kitchen the other day.
I accept that having The Littlest Kitchen In The World is a first world problem. I know there are people in far worse positions than me and I’m grateful. When I pause to consider this humbling fact, I know that whatever happens to me (and to Panda the cat who has absolutely no idea her world as she knows it is about to be thrown up in the air once more and she’s going to have to become an in-house cat and forgo her outdoor life) it is nothing in the great scheme of things. I will do what I always do when something upends my world. I will flail about internally and wordlessly—as an autistic this is what I’ve learned I do—and use the strongest Eff word I know : “fine” quite a lot.
Then I’ll file it away under ‘material’ to be brought out and used in a piece of future writing.
I’m not panicking
if you know of a smaller one then I would be thrilled to hear about it
see 2.
you know what to do
it’s not