How Good We’ve Got It

A love letter to modern conveniences, for when the world feels unhinged.

Just want to remind you that, only a few hundred years ago, kitchens weren’t part of the main house because they all eventually caught fire; sleeping next to everyone else in a big pile was a normal thing (bedrooms? Nope); chimney’s were a ‘brilliant new invention; people saw public hangings as entertainment; and no one had hot water on tap. 

(Yes, if you’re wondering, I have started reading my first Ken Follett.)

Even in my dad’s lifetime (bear with me here, as a devout Yorkshireman he’s prone to over-exaggeration), a horse and cart would come by every week to collect the privy… stuff; there’d be seventeen to a bed; bathwater was shared by all (gag); and he always tells us the tale about that flat he rented in Harrogate for £3 a month where there was a bath in the kitchen that had a section of chopping board for a lid—talk about multi-purpose. He even said, in the winter when it was freezing, he’d chuck some lit newspaper into the outside toilet (it being a hole in the ground with a shed on the top) so he could warm his arse. 

Yet here we are, so many of us in the developed world, taking bloody outrageous advantage of steaming hot showers, induction hobs, electric pianos, and flushing toilets. And don’t get me started on the humble dishwasher; I could write fucking poetry about the dishwasher (comment below if that’s what you’re into and maybe, one day…). 

Yes, the world might be on the brink of what-the-actual-fuck-is-happening level chaos, and maybe our smart phones and constant connectivity and insane use of plastic has caused it, but my point isn’t that (because… what can we realistically do right this second?), it’s this:

you have no idea—not a sausage—how good you’ve got it.

Yes, we can decide to despair about politics (and with good reason, no doubt), moan about the cost of living, worry about the future of all things…

…or maybe, just for a tiny second, maybe once a day even, we can sit in glorious wonder at the magic of being alive in an era where humble folk like me—daughter of a man who crapped in a hole in the ground and shared a bed with a dozen urchins—have access to a machine that washes the dishes. 

Need more of this sort of inspiration right now? Read this, from my pops himself.

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Do you love the dishwasher as much as I do? Vote below for excellent poetry.

If you could time travel for a day, would you go back to experience the simple life (shared bathwater and all)?

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