While making tea, I recall a friend's advice.
‘Get a Quooker,’ he proclaimed, referring to a newfangled kitchen tap that can deliver instant boiling water to the teapot. He added, ‘Banish the boredom of waiting for the kettle to boil!’
His counsel could apply to many humdrum routines (waiting for the bus, walking to post a letter). There was an implicit notion that boredom is dead time, better used elsewhere, were it not for the dull necessity of quotidian tasks.
I set to work researching the cost of
