Say cheese

What, I wonder, would cause the most unease if, during a dinner party, you revealed that you had purchased an artefact central to that dinner party second hand on eBay? Charity shops, of course, won’t take any kind of food processor or food preparation gear because no matter how well scrubbed, there’s always the danger that listeria bacteria lurks in the blender.

I reckon that a second hand barbeque has to be up there. God knows the grill of mine is ‘seasoned to perfection’, that is, has not been cleaned properly in months, my cleaning routine consisting of sterilising the thing with flame from the gas burners, relying on the gristly globules to burn themselves off and chipping off the worst of the smoking residue with a rusty prong.

But I think that the number one device that would case second-hand fear would be a fondue maker. (Maker? Machine? Heater?) It is that perfect storm of dairy in an unnatural form (melted…ugg), kitch association (if a couple own a fondue kit (Kit! That’s it, it’s a kit!) then it doesn’t automatically mean they also own a sauna and are swingers, but it’s a safe enough assumption), and the ghosts of a thousand sad cheesy meals that might have been cooked using that kit.

It also poses the fundamental question, what sort of person sells their fondue kit, and what sort of person buys it? The solution to the last question is – somebody who has invited you to dinner thinking you are the sort of person who likes fondue. Prey that that is the extent of their gross character misjudgement and that they haven’t assumed you also like ‘foudue’.