“If I were a kitchen appliance,” I declared to no-one in particular as I propped myself up on the table with an arm wrapped around my shiny new blender, “I’d wanna be a blender.”

With my face pressed against the cool glass cylinder which was dotted with the yellow seeds of what had once been a punnet of strawberries I continued to wax lyrical about this, the party animal of kitchen appliances until my throat became parched enough to warrant another round of daiquiris.

To my great horror I had run out of limes. After a desperate scrounge around the back of the fridge, I discovered a lime coloured bottle of pre-squeezed juice and decided that just this once it might be alright to pollute my new blender with a lesser ingredient. After all, I was far too inebriated to sustain purist notions of fresh limes and more importantly, too thirsty.

As I watched my new gizmo in action, whizzing up the delicious combination of lime juice, sugar, rum and ice into a refreshing cocktail, I marvelled at myself for having waited so damn long to buy a blender. All those wasted years of drinking beer from the bottle, or haphazardly mixing up a spirit with a soft drink, when I could have been measuring out portions by the millilitre and experimenting with this unique blend of fruit and alcohol.

Thoughts of my misspent youth dissolved into memories of that momentous day when I had bypassed the urge to purchase a non-Japanese stereo which tuned into a frequency higher than 90 MHZ and instead bought this wonderfully clever little contraption. All those months listening to Light FM, waiting patiently for a song in between the inane comparisons of flip-top versus slide mobiles, the endless scripture quoting and I am happy to report that I don’t regret my blenderific decision one ounce.

Oh blenderific decision! I wiped away a tear or two and clasped the jug full of freshly blended daiquiris in both hands, lifted it above my head like a trophy and paused for the cheering to subside before flooding my parched mouth with the sweet refreshing nectar within.

By the time I drained the contents of the jug and stumbled over to my Kenwood, my eyes were having trouble focusing. Running my fingers blindly over the sleek silver body of the stereo, I tried to find the CD play button by feel alone but the combination of Japanese ingenuity and my intoxication defeated me. My sausage like fingers fumbled with the delicate technology until frustration overwhelmed me and I began hammering the precision equipment with the flat of my palms.

As though in protest, the stereo burst into life and uttered a high-pitched ethereal wail. I tried to focus for long-enough to locate the volume button but the evil screeching forced me backward until I was cowering in the kitchen. Hugging the blender to my chest, I rocked back and forth repeating the mantra: “1/3 cup rum, ¼ cup lime juice, ¼ cup sugar, 6 strawberries, 14 ice cubes and blend, blend, blend. Serves 2.”

By the fifth repetition, things stopped spinning and the wailing of the stereo clarified until I was able to identify the high-pitched keening as the voice of a particularly nasal American. Having identified the source of the assault on my ears, I slowly began to make out words and the words uttered, “Make Jesus your choice in your private Rolls Royce.”

Befuddled, it eventually dawned on me that the stereo was tuned into Light FM and that I was being bombarded with the message of pastor and motivational speaker Tony Campolo preaching about the relevance of Jesus and warning us about the presence of virtual virgins in our midst.

Slowly things began to make sense again. I even remembered how to unplug the stereo at the socket. In the silence that followed, I made a vow to never experiment with the above recipe for a strawberry daiquiri again even if the button-topped golden capped mushrooms that had sprouted in my yard had seemed like a gift from God himself.

I reached for my blender again. Yes, an ice coffee thick shake was just the thing to help me regain my equilibrium.

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