A while ago we bought a Philips food processor and registered our purchase with Philips to get a free accessory box. It was nice to get the accessory box, but I’m beginning to think it was a Faustian pact. Since then Philips have bombarded me with emails of more products that I might like. Did I not know that they would do this? That the only reason they offer a free accessory box is to get hold of my email address? Yes, of course I did, but it’s what they offer that’s insidious, gadgets that try to worm their way into your affections.
On Sunday, for example (it’s reassuring to know that Philips works on a Sunday) they told me about an espresso machine – a device with beans-to-cup customisation and dynamic multi-media user interface. It remembers six unique user profiles and for each of those six, up to nine customised beverages. To identify which of the six you are, it has fingerprint user recognition.
You merely put your finger on the recognition device and select from your choice of nine beverages and it grinds the beans precisely to specification, brews them for just how long you like it, adds the perfect amount of milk and froth, delivers it into your cup and goes off to clean and descale itself. How could one not love this machine?
Well, first off, I resented having to give my fingerprints to enter the USA. To get a cup of coffee, it’s outrageous. It’s the thin end of the wedge. What kind of society do we have where even coffee machines keep track of you?
Next, it costs £1,700. I don’t think I need say any more. £1,700, and you still have to buy the beans.
The eurozone is going tits up, the FTSE is dropping, the unemployment rate is rising. But don’t worry, the splendid chaps at Philips have brought out this terrific coffee machine, the cost of which covers what a 24-year old on jobseekers allowance is expected to live on for 33 weeks.
I suppose if I were a banker with a bonus to get rid of, it might appeal. If I won the lottery – no, I never buy a ticket so that won’t happen. Let’s keep this realistic – if I won a million on the premium bonds I might consider it. Diana wouldn’t even do that. If we won a million you could have the new Mercedes, she said, but I wouldn’t give the coffee machine houseroom. Where would we put it?
She has a point. The coffee machine would go ideally in one of those huge kitchen-dining rooms that everyone on ‘Escape to the Country’ seems to want. We have a more traditional arrangement – a tiny kitchen, but separate breakfast room, pantry and utility room. If we bought a £1,700 coffee machine, it wouldn’t fit in the kitchen. We would have to build a separate alcove for it in the breakfast room, a shrine to the stainless steel household god of coffee where we would light votive candles and genuflect to appease it on our way past to the kitchen, where we would shove a teaspoon of instant into a mug and pour on nearly boiling water.