How much pleasure can you get from a kitchen?

There’s a shop I walk past in Geneva nearly every day that sells beautiful minimalist kitchens. I can’t walk by without imagining myself enjoying a glass of wine over a granite work surface, chopping mint and chilli. One day, I went in there with Jose, just to have a nose around. The saleswoman – very Genevois and hands off – showed us a catalogue. We took one look at the prices and walked out. The kitchens are lovely but 100000 franc lovely? And then there would be the stress and the pressure of living up to such a kitchen.

It reminded me of a friend in London who owned a flat in Muswell Hill. It wasn’t much of a flat but she owned it, it was hers. She wasn’t particularly interested in DIY or having a beautiful house. She liked nice things and for her flat to be clean and tidy but she wasn’t obsessive.
But the thing she was most proud of in her flat was the white carpet in her living room (she called it her living room but she didn’t actually do much living in there). She didn’t eat in there or drink in there. She did watch television but when she did she made sure she took her shoes off.
She had friends around quite regularly. When they visited they’d eat and drink in the dining room on wooden backed chairs and if they did go into the living room where there were softer more comfortable chairs, they too, would take off their shoes.

I think that white carpets and beautiful kitchens are very nice. But how much pleasure can you ever get out of a nice kitchen? You can enjoy the food you cook in it, the people who sit in it, the giving and taking of being sociable that a good kitchen has at its heart.

But if you have an immaculate, expensive kitchen or a beautiful white carpet – the kitchen rather than the sociability can become the focus. The people you invite into your home might leave a mark on your carpet or your kitchen or, indeed you life. But I think that’s why you invite people in – so that they will leave a mark. Otherwise, why bother?

Another way around this dilemma of reconciling people and property is to be careful about the kinds of people you invite into your home. Either people who can be guaranteed not to harm your home in any way – which at the very least rules out children, old people, smokers and anyone who’s had more than four drinks. Or people who will not object in any way to you demanding of them that they alter their behaviour and manners to suit your priorities – for instance by taking off their shoes.

Surely no one would rationally say that a floor is more important than a friend is? But I think there’s a kind of rationale of certain friendships which are based on an implicit understanding of zero risk and therefore zero damage – a tacit acknowledgement that your floor, or kitchen, or career is actually more important. But can this really be called friendship?

This is a kind of friendship that rests on a kind of reciprocity of under-commitment – you wont give away anything that really costs you anything, but then you wont expect anything really valuable back in return.

This attitude kind of sums up social life in Geneva and why it can be described as soulless. This doesn’t surprise me. Soul comes from what you are prepared to give.