5 hours ago
5
I bought an oven. I wish I hadn’t. Ovens are like homes, cars, pets and partners, in that you can like the look of them but can’t know what it’s like to live with them until you’re living with them. And by then, it’s too late; you’re stuck with them. All I wanted was an oven that gets hot, to a temperature of my choosing, until the cooking is done, at which point I can switch it off. That’s it. But functionality this simple exists only in the good old days. In ovens, as in all things, manufacturers seek to excite our feeble minds with ever more fantastical features. One knob is all I want, all I need. But, as Feargal Sharkey might sing to himself, a single knob these days is hard to find.
My new oven actually has no knob at all, which is worse. This curates the vibe of simplicity but is only a mask for unconscionable complexity. It’s like the cleverdickery of a Tesla car’s cabin. Look how simple it is, how clean, how clever! Nothing but a steering wheel and a giant touchscreen, but thereon and therein – as with my wretched oven – lies a world of pain, confusion and entirely unnecessary nonsense.
My new oven has a touchscreen. We got off to a very bad start: I switched it on and was invited to choose what TYPE OF HEATING I would like. Option one was HOT AIR. Hot air? A joke, surely? Hot effing air? Frantically, I pressed and swiped, looking for something, anything, to suggest this oven wasn’t been serious. Other types of heating on offer include TOP/BOTTOM HEAT, CIRCO THERM GENTLE, TOP/BOTTOM HEAT GENTLE, AIR FRY (air fry? I’ve got one of them already), CIRCO ROASTING and BOTTOM HEAT. No, me neither. Shrug emoji. Whatever. But HOT AIR I cannot forgive. That just means fan oven, surely? Or does it? I may never know. I mean, I suppose it’s not untrue, in that it is air that is hot but it’s still so irritating. I knew someone at college who was like this. She could never use the most straightforward words for anything. Example: she once asked me whether I wanted some toast, but she didn’t say toast, oh no. She asked me if I wanted some hot bread. I wondered what had become of her. Perhaps she ended up designing ovens.
Defeated, I stabbed the HOT AIR icon. How complicated could they make the selection of the temperature? Very, as it turned out. By now I was more fascinated than irritated. The temperatures on offer here are 30, 100, 120, 140, 160, 180, 210, 230. Why? Why these? Why the big gap between 30 and 100? Why no 200? There is a way of selecting temperatures other than these, and on occasion I have managed to do so without being clear how I have achieved this. I struggle to repeat the trick. I hate the thing. I am disconsolate as it’s struck me that, what with me being 59 next month, if this machine lasts much longer than 10 years then, who knows, I might even predecease it. This might be the last oven of my life. The thought is unbearable.
There was global unease this week about the guy who accidentally hacked into robot vacuum cleaners around the world. Scary stuff, but the surveillance aspect is not my biggest worry about this story. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a mobile camera broadcasting footage of my ankles worldwide, but hey, if some random bloke in Nebraska spots where my mislaid passport has been hiding under the sofa, then I can see one small upside in the way the world’s going.
No, my beef is with all the interactions, the communications, the relentless nagging that’s part of this Internet of Things. And here, I’m afraid, I have to take you back to my new oven. I’m sorry if you’ve had enough of this oven, but so have I. Welcome to my world. So far I’ve resisted every request to connect to my appliances. My washing machine has been asking me to get together for a while now. I feel bad rebuffing its advances, as I’m quite well disposed to it. We’ve been getting on just fine, so why risk ruining a good thing by formalising our relationship via Bluetooth, or wireless, or whatever it is? There’s no need. We’re good. Let’s keep things casual. The machine seems to have stopped asking now, and I fear I’ve hurt its feelings, but there you go. The oven however, the wretched HOT AIR oven, isn’t taking no for an answer. Every other day it demanded to be connected to my broadband. Bugger off, no chance. But then it got more insistent, even angry, threatening – in so many words – to down tools if the connection wasn’t made. It needed an update, you see, and if the update wasn’t facilitated, then I’d be sorry. Make it stop. I’m sick of this world. Just give me HOT AIR, if that’s what you want to call it, and stop nagging me.
But I relented. And now it’s got me in its grasp. I get no peace. I can now, even if I’m on the moon, get it to generate hot air at one of its random temperatures. Great. More usefully, to be fair, I can also switch off the hot air if I’ve inadvertently gone off on a round-the-world cruise having left the oven on. But if I’ve left it cooking for a set duration, when it switches itself off it messages me that it’s done so. OK, thanks. But then it asks if I’m quite sure that I don’t want the hot air on for a while longer. No. I. Don’t. And the alerts keep coming. Ping goes my phone. A loved one perhaps? No, just the oven wanting a word. An update required maybe. Another one.
In a world in which I can’t get anyone to communicate with me – my bank, my broadband provider, my doctor, my daughters – I can’t get an oven I don’t even like to give me a minute’s peace. The Internet of Things? It’s all balls. A load of hot air.
