I want to say microwaves really boil my piss, but they don’t. Firstly, because I’ve never tried and secondly, because they probably wouldn’t do it anyway. I was quite young, probably under 10 years old when my mum got her first microwave. I say it was hers, we weren’t allowed to use it as kids and my dad rarely went in the kitchen for anything other than biscuits or to drop off tea cups for washing up. My mum was a bit scared of ours so would always leave a mug of cold in water in it, just in case.

It was supposed to be amazing, it would heat food in a quarter of the time, reheat leftovers, jacket potatoes cooked in 10 minutes.

All lies. It never heated anything that quickly, it did something to a reheated plate of chicken I never want any of my senses to experience again. And jacket potatoes, only if you want a thin slippery skin. 30 years on, have they improved? A little undoubtedly, microwaves are probably more energy efficient, they do cook more quickly, but defrosting still leaves quite a lot to be desired, and as for reheating?

Imagine the scene, a plate of left over Bolognese. I put it in, put my re-usable microwave lid on the plate and give it 3 minutes. At this point I think it’ll nearly be ready and I can stir it and give it another minute. Ping! Open microwave. I reach in and remove my microwave lid, a mushroom cloud of steam bursts from within scalds me up to my wrist. The cloud of liquid fire has dispersed and I reach in to get my plate of Bolognese;  the plate now however is hotter than the centre of a neutron star. More swearing. Oven glove on, plate out, stir my food. This has got to be ready, *tentative excitement* there’s a little bits where it looks like it’s caught at edges. 3 minutes for Bolognese – winner! I stir my food, the steam immediately disappears, I tentatively touch the fork I used to stir the food, its cold. What the…? The food is still cold. How is this possible? I’ve got a cloud of liquid fire and plate so hot Sauron wants to borrow it for the forge, and cold Bolognese. I stir, I put it back and repeat. Every fucking time. I don’t learn. Every time I think it’ll done it properly this time. It never does. It wouldn’t boil my piss, it’d only heat the mug in which I pissed.