Don’t squander time

The subject was sausages. Specifically, another round of breakfast-table jibes about my habit of cooking sausages in the microwave. 

From the 20-somethings who make our house a crossroads — my daughter, my son and daughter-in-law and the friends they bring through — it’s a habit that provokes adjectives normally reserved for people who smoke in elevators: disgusting, awful, smelly, improper, perverse. My routine defence is that it’s convenient, I only cook them that way for myself and don’t foist them on anyone else. 

But for these children of the iPad, my failure to take a few extra minutes to drag out the frying pan and tend to the breakfast meat until it’s golden brown borders on the blasphemous.