I bought this little camping kettle a couple of years ago. I found it in one of the local charity shops and paid one whole English pound for it. I liked its dinkiness, the cherry red colour and the lovely rounded shape and somewhere in the back of my mind I just knew it would come in handy one day. It's been lurking in the back of the wardrobe ever since then but on Saturday morning, when the electric kettle boiled its last, I was so pleased I had it.
I'm not sure how long we'd had the electric kettle - some years that's for sure - and it has had to do A LOT of water boiling, particularly in the summer months when it's our only source of hot water. The vagaries of the tres ancient heating system in this house include the rather annoying trait of heating all the upstairs radiators if you have it on hot water only. We found this out the first summer we were here and ever since we've made do with boiling the kettle when we need hot water. Luckily, we do have an electric shower so at least there is hot water to order in the bathroom.
A couple of days of heating the water for washing up in saucepans on the stove were more than enough for me. The little red camping kettle was just the ticket for making cups of tea as it holds enough for two half-pint mugs, but it wasn't up to boiling enough water for the twice-daily washing up marathon. So yesterday, we bought a fancy-pants all singing, all dancing brand-new kettle which had the scandalous price of £50. Fifty pounds!!!! Who on earth would pay that much for a kettle - no matter that it lights up blue when it's switched on? More sensibly we found it at half price - though we were both shocked that kettles cost more than a tenner these days. I'm sure if we'd had the luxury of time we'd have shopped around to find a better price but two days of being sans electric kettle - and thereby sans easily-achieved hot water - were more than enough for me. Still, I'm quite sad to be packing the little camping kettle away again.
We always use a stove top whistling kettle, we can't bring ourselves the splash out on an electric one as the only ones that look mildly attractive and are A* Rated are way beyond our budget. x
Posted by: Vix | 09/14/2011 at 07:47 AM
50 quid!!?? It's got to be special.
Posted by: Maureen | 09/14/2011 at 07:59 AM
Of course it's special - it lights up blue ! That sounds so cool, though I really can't imagine what good it does. I suppose it saves electricity in that you wouldn't need to switch the light on when making a cuppa in the evening ?
Posted by: Ponytail | 09/14/2011 at 10:54 AM
Like you i was astounded to see the price of kettles these days. I'm sticking with my old banger til it conks lol
Posted by: sharie | 09/14/2011 at 09:35 PM