Lyrics Too Many Cookers - Flanders , Swann

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
Free the British housewife
Give her a life of her own
Our 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 in 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
Instead of a cook, you rarely meet
A consulting engineer
There's a pinger on the ringer
We can't hear each other speak
That thing on the shelf's been whipping itself
For the best part of a week
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
With our new pneumatic icer
Our self-actuated nicer
The ideal-for-cooking ricer
And the hard-boiled duck egg slicer
With the universal grater
And the patent desiccator
The vibrating dehydrater
And the plastic percolator
The electric coffee grinder
The serrated vega grinder
The expungeable reminder
And the vermicelli winder
Oh, we've every sort of gadget
And it's rather odd to think
We still can't open sardine tins
And we still stop up the sink
We don't want a labour-saving kitchen
We much prefer the one we had before
Why did science have to pitch in
To our nice, old-fashioned pigeon?
Please don't save us labour anymore!