Now, I am not saying that I am stupid. By no means. But some things are just not my thing. And one of them is reading instructions. Even as a child, when my brothers and I would be building aeroplanes from little kits, I would not listen to anybody’s advice. So the end result was always different to everybody else. My brothers would show-off their beautiful state-of-the art planes that looked exactly like it should be on the box. But, little old me, would produce a plane with the wings stuck on in the wrong places and the cockpit would be definitely hanging in a precarious position on the fuesillage.

I suppose, even then I did not want to succomb to the norm. My way was the only way. And when Sister Macalletta of the Presentation nuns, gave us a sewing assignment, the whole class would wait with bated breath…. She would breat the knuckles off me. “The individual has spoken again. A wonder to behold….” As she inspected my interpretation of an ordinary tea-cosy. Twenty five bland examples were perched in front of her. Perfectly sewn to her specifications. One stood out. I was the satan of anarchy (I had to look it up in the dictionary, being 10 years of age). I was the daughter of satan and his accomplices. It didn’t help that I was left-handed. I seemingly was also cursed with sitting on the left-hand side of the devil himself!!

All through my adult life, I refused to bend to the norm. Even Ikea’s furniture suffered gladly under my stubborn refusal to conform. My bed collapsed under me and I still blamed the designer for not putting the right brackets or pegs into the right holes!

So when my daughter and I opened up my birthday present (from a very good girlfriend), we were delighted to see a Senseo coffeee machine gleaming in front of us. It looked perfectly simple. White, streamlined and super modern. My daughter proceeed to read the instructions….but I promptly exclaimed that we don ‘t need them. It was a very simple task to make coffee from this machine. Firstly, we ran down to the local supermarket and bought as many flavours of coffee that we could think of.

Down to work…. We filled the container with water and pressed the 'on' button. So far, so good. We put our cups underneath and waited for our miracle to happen. We got two cups of cold coffee. Okay. Something is not right. I suggested that we boil the water separately and place it in the container and then press the on. Eventually, so many coffee pads later, we realised the trick. One 'on' button and the other two pressed simultaneously, make your coffee. Delighted with ourselves, we sat down to our cappucino's which flowed abundantly out of the machine. We used the wrong filter and more cappucino ended up on the work surface. But we didn’t care. We had it sussed. Mozart wagged his tail furiously and squeezed between us on the settee.

“Mom, how about trying the vanilla and chocolate flavour? We just have to change the filter”. Oh, isn’t life so simple and uncomplicated. I heard the buzz of the new machine in our outdated kitchen. Bring on the next challenge, oh life. I could just see Sister Macaletta’s enraged face looming before me. I blew her an imaginary kiss. This kiddo ain’t finished yet…..

Niamh

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