I propose a toast

We have a new toaster.

I’ll admit, that isn’t the most exciting opening line I’ve ever written, but until I’m chased by a giant killer ninja robot on roller skates (me, and the robot) no opening line will be. But the toaster itself, that is exciting.

In the olden days toasters were just hot slots of fun. You usually had to guess when the toast was done and the only button was the one you twanged down to lower the bread (let’s call it the bread twanger) which then twanged back up at a high velocity to present your grilled bread products.

That was then, when things were simpler. Now there’s something akin to Knight Rider (the car, not the Hasselhoff) sitting in the corner of the room. It’s sleek, black, with a diamond effect to it, and I half expect it to talk to me in a posh camp English accent querying why I’m having a bagel.

It has a bread twanger. In fact, it has two. Independent of each other. Now that would be exciting enough, but then there are the extra buttons. ‘Defrost’ – well, that’s just ‘I’ll keep the toast down a bit longer shall I?’, the old equivalent of holding down the twanger. ‘Reheat’ – which further makes it sound like it’s a piece of military equipment, I'm surprised it doesn't produce stealth-toast.

And, most joyous of all, ‘Cancel’. Actually, that’s a bit disingenuous, as if you cancel something then it shouldn’t happen. I tried cancelling toast that had been going for 2 minutes and it didn’t turn back into normal bread, it stayed ‘a bit toasted’. ‘Abort toasting process’ would have been better, but they probably didn’t have space for that. No space, because there’s a massive numbered (1-5) gauge with the words “TOAST COLOUR” on it.

Can colour be defined by a number? Is the fact that Number 1 is white some sort of inherent toaster racism? Perhaps the numbers relate to a scale I’m not aware of, like tog ratings on a duvet.

Oh, and it’s utterly silent. The bread cooks and then slowly twangs back up like it’s being made by a hitman. In fact, it doesn’t really twang at all. I’m going to need a new name for the bread twanger.

In summary: It’s the toastest with the mostest, a thriller-of-a-griller, and I must admit it really does heat bread up and harden it very satisfactorily.

It’s just a bit scary. So if I turn up dead, grilled together, the colour of 5, you’ll know what’s happened