I never bought a microwave oven until I was pregnant. For years I resisted, for, I admit, partly irrational reasons. Leaky radiation frying my brain every time I pinged a ready meal. Soggy vegetables. Baked potatoes with sad, floppy skins. Hotspots that took off the roof of your mouth, next to other spots that were still frozen and raw. The fact that they annihilated all those lovely vitamins (like the radiation worries, now apparently disproven). More than anything, the fact it was yet another unlovely gadget to take up valuable worktop space.

But I finally relented, and boy have I not looked back. While the main oven is obviously the main source for proper nice grub (I’m not a complete food heathen), the microwave is undoubtedly handy when you have a baby. Yes, OK, I’m talking mainly making Ready Brek. But not just that. When your baby is howling his or her head off, a microwave requires one dish, two minutes and a button to defrost some bread, to cook some broccoli or some sweet potato, to heat up yesterdays leftovers, or poach a piece of salmon. It won’t get you on the shortlist for Masterchef. But it might just save your sanity. And as I’m far as I’m concerned, that’s better than an Aga.