Too Many Cookers

Flanders: Too many cookers:

Both: When we had an old-fashioned kitchen,
Cooking was a slow but easy-going job.
A place to talk, a place to sit and stitch in,
While we kept half an eye on the kettle on the hob.
Cooks went the way of the dinosaur,
We struggled on alone.
Then science provided the answer,
Freed the British housewife,
Gave her a life of her own.

A kitchen on the modern plan may be a fancy looker,
But we've jumped out of the frying pan into the pressure cooker.

We have every sort of gadget now for every sort of chore,
But it's much more work and worry than it ever was before.
There are cables on the tables with plugs of every shape,
And what we save on elbow grease we spend on insulating tape.

The fridge is quite prodigious at refrigerating grub,
But every forty minutes it goes BUB-BUB-BUB-BUB-BUB-BUB-BUB!
We're confused by all the fuses, the oven changes gear,
It's never a cook, you really need a consulting engineer.
There's a pinger on the ringer, we can't hear each other speak,
Flanders: That thing on the shelf's been whipping itself
For the best part of a week!
Both: The pilot light is winking, we can't locate the switch,
We've every sort of gadget but we don't know which is which.

Flanders: With our new pneumatic icer...
Swann: Self-actuator dicer...
Flanders: The ideal-for-cooking ricer...
Swann: And hard-boiled duck egg slicer...

Flanders: With the universal grater...
Swann: And a patent dessicator...
Flanders: The vibrating dehydrator...
Swann: And a plastic percolator...
Both: The electric coffee grinder...
The serrated bacon rinder...
The expungable reminder...
And the vermicelli winder...

Oh, we've every sort of gadget,
And it's rather hard to think.
We still can't open sardine cans,
And we still stop up the sink.

We don't want a labor-saving kitchen,
We much prefer the one we had before.
Why did science have to pitch into our nice old-fashioned kitchen?
Please don't save us labor anymore!