pre-heating

It is my turn to cook dinner today. As always, I spend an hour browsing various BBC websites looking for variations of the one thing I cook: chicken. When I finally decide on a marinade, I spend another hour thinking about when to marinate the thing when I hear her shout. It’s 7PM, she shouts. When are you starting dinner? I go down, marinate the chicken and tell her that, now, we must wait. I am going to pre heat the oven, I say. Ten minutes later I am with my girlfriend. I hear the mother shouting downstairs. Hurry up, she says. The oven is ready. I call and pretend to be a technician from Zanetti, the brand of our oven. She does not fall for the prank. You don’t need to pre hear these types of oven, she says. They stay warm. This is my life now.