Wok Disposal
June 26 2007
I moved house last weekend. My modest rented accommodation seems to have generated enough useless stuff to whip car boot sellers into an excited frenzy.
The local
Oxfam now looks
spookily familiar, but there are only so many woks, fondue sets and Dan Brown books that even a charity shop can handle.
Ken
Hom has a lot to answer for. Maybe there is a wok graveyard somewhere, in fact I am surprised there isn't a dedicated wok recycle bin outside every house. Perhaps UFOs are just woks flamboyantly discarded by frustrated owners, who's wok cupboards are bulging with unwanted duplication. They might come in useful with the flash floods this country seems to be experiencing at the moment. Attach one to each foot and run quickly across the water.
There should be a public wok register to stop unwanted presents for those that already posses one, which I bet you do. It would work a bit like TV licensing in this country, everyone is presumed to have a wok unless they give notification otherwise, and even then they are disbelieved.
Don't get me wrong I love wok cooking, I just don't need ten of them.
Why do we insist on having lots of stuff around us? Well I suppose stuff is a sort of memory map of your life, like an interactive diary. Its hard to get rid of memories, no matter how reassuring your Buzz
Lightyear looks standing proud in your corner cupboard boldly surveying the premises.
After some digging around I eventually assembled my wine, a modest, eclectic bunch of bottles.
One bottle of
Moet (calmly and patiently waiting for a celebration), one Vin
Santo (never tastes quite the same in the wet UK), one quite extraordinary Italian wine, the bottle extravagantly heavy, label undecipherable, a cheap M&S chardonnay, an excellent
Medoc Bordeaux, a bottle of
Prosecco and a bottle of
fino sherry.
Each bottle of my rather limp collection is still a wonderful memory map of the vintage, a time capsule subtly massaged by various chemicals over the years (months in the cheap chardonnay case), all designed to ease your mind from the trials and tribulations of wok disposal.
Most of the wine I drink is bought and drunk within a few days. I would like to join a wine club to boost my ailing collection. Any suggestions welcome.
Buzz and I, together with
endless boxes, are now happily rehoused.
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