Audrey Raishbrook, confessed technophobe, tells us her microwave horror story....

Audrey Raishbrook

Audrey Raishbrook had a medical crisis a few years ago after her son and his family came to stay. They brought with them a new microwave oven, which greatly impressed her. She liked it so much that Joe her son bought her one, instructing her very particularly "not to put anything metal in the microwave".

Audrey thought (because Joe's a caring and thoughtful son) that she'd been given this instruction for the benefit of her health. Audrey used the microwave for six months or so without incident. One day she came home in a hurry from work, and selected a pre-prepared meal from the fridge, not noticing at the time that it was in a tin foil container. She put the timer on and dashed about getting ready to go out.

Eventually she heard the microwave 'ping' indicating that the food was ready, and went back to the kitchen to remove her delicious meal. She put her hand into the microwave and removed the dish, realising as she did so that it was made from tin foil. "I dropped it down on the work surface in absolute horror. I looked down at my hand and thought 'that's going to turn black, or it's going to drop off'. It sounds irrational to you, but I was really, really horrified".

Audrey admits that she's somewhat of a technophobe. She didn't know what on earth to do, and paced the kitchen trying to make up her mind. "I thought 'I know what I'll do, I'll put my coat on and I'll run round the block and that will blow all these strange electrical ions away". So off Audrey went dashing round the block, still convinced she could feel strange sensations running up her arm and, as she imagined, into her brain. In retrospect, she could see that these sensations were all produced by her feverish imagination, but at the time they were very real.

By now Audrey was in panic mode. She returned home, and very gingerly picked up the foil dish with a cloth and put it in her pedal bin, still feeling very anxious. She decided at that point to go to the Accident and Emergency department at her local hospital. She arrived there, looking pretty dishevelled and wild-eyed by this time, and whispered to the Receptionist "Could I please talk to somebody in private?". She saw a nurse quite quickly, who saw how worried Audrey was and treated her with sympathy. Audrey told her the story of the microwave. "I seem to remember she sort of sucked her cheeks in very, very slightly to stop the mirth...she said 'well I don't think you need to worry about yourself, but you probably need your microwave seeing to'".

Audrey slinked off home feeling pretty silly. Realising she was still hungry she retrieved the still-warm dish from her pedal bin and ate it. When she told her son what had happened he could only hope that she hadn't given her name at the hospital.