Toast Saga

We returned the new toaster- the enormous, ominous, thoroughly perplexing ticking toaster that drew every crumb of pleasure out of toast making- and we brought home another, somewhat humble, appliance.
The instructions are, admittedly, rather lengthy; they promise that the machine can perform housework, pack lunches, answer the telephone and lock the doors at night- the latter being a necessity given my lingering fears that the other toaster will come back to haunt us with a familiar tick tick tick at the living room window one moonless night.
In tiny, almost illegible print, beneath the assurances that it can do laundry and wrap birthday presents, it also claims to make toast; and that, we decided, was good enough for us.