If all else fails, embrace the ping

The microwave is making me so damned happy right now it’s verging on alarming

You’ve been microwaving your food completely wrong, according to a Tik Tok star. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Appliances never used to spark this much joy. Maybe I’m approaching middle age faster than I realised. But regardless of existential dread, heating WFH lunches for one has never been such a rapid and efficient revelation as it has in recent weeks.

Even if I have exploded a few foodstuffs for lack of practice and caught myself taking that uncertain step back the first time I pressed “go” on the new – to us at least – gadget.

No, I haven’t accidentally woken up in the 1980s. We just haven’t had such a miraculous tool in our house for a while, mostly because we tried to cut down on our consumption in general when the last one pinged, incurably, for the final time. We didn’t want to go out and buy endless stuff without being sure we really needed it – especially the kind of small electrical appliances that contribute so badly towards the UK’s runaway e-waste problem.