I register a look of annoyance from the first friend who thought she was the “winner” in this bout of status jousting. “Well, the building company have basically said that our extension is the largest project they’ve worked on,” the first friend explains. “And it’s a real challenge because of the shape of our garden which is also super big too. It’s going to take at least eight months to complete.”
Babies and size of babies is one thing people brag about. Or how many hours it took you to birth your children, and how little pain relief you had. Or how bad your menopause symptoms are. Or how you can touch your toes without bending your knees. But now? Kitchens, or more specifically kitchen extensions.
What happened to quality chat? The kind where you talk about what films you’ve seen or books you’ve read. Or whether so and so has split up with their husband and is having an affair with their brother’s best mate – that one with the impressive hair replacement from Turkey.
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I join a new conversation and hope to get away with a couple of nods.
Just as I make a move to get away from this man he looks at me. “Got any plans to extend your kitchen?” he asks. It sounds vaguely threatening. In the old days it would have been something far more flirtatious like: “Do you want to pop outside and share a fag?” which we all knew was code for snog.
Perhaps I’m jealous? It’s true that it’s triggering when everyone in your neighbourhood has the “More Space”, board stuck up in front of their house. The scaffolding going up. The sound of walls being smashed down…
Okay, I would actually love a big kitchen but the thing is if I had this kitchen then I wouldn’t talk to people about it. I would just move into a house with a massive kitchen. I definitely wouldn’t bore on to friends or use it to demonstrate my superiority over others lower down the middle class food chain.
Midlife is very much this feeling that you’re young one minute, in the cut and thrust of it all, going to gigs, being able to dance properly without people sniggering – then suddenly you’re 50 and the people you went to school with live in six-bedroom mansions. They have holidays in Tuscany. They have au pairs. They might own second homes and complain about their enormous tax returns.
Author Alain de Botton once said: “The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.”
The massive kitchen tells the world that you’ve arrived. The blood, sweat and tears, the terrible job, the boss who belittled you at every opportunity, the massive remortgage, the months without an oven eating ready meals, and arguing with your spouse about what colour tiles to get behind the sink…were all worthwhile! You can stand in a pub garden and talk about third party wall agreements like the rest of your peers. You can die happy.
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