Its rare that a man of my vintage gets excited these days, but the joy was palpable last week as I awaited the screech of brakes and the dump and dash move which seems to be the stock in trade of Amazon delivery drivers these days.

The item, wrapped in a box that was big enough to use as a Labrador’s coffin, contained a bundle of joy by means of a ‘Ninja mini chopper.’

It’s not the first time I’ve taken charge of a mini chopper (arf, arf!), but we’ll leave the Benny Hill jokes just outside the door as I extol the virtues of the kitchen appliance, of which the Ninja chopper has entered straight into European qualification, if not a Champion’s League spot.

The blades are sharper than lemon infused kumquats and its power is, pound for pound, the Manny Pacquaio of the appliances sector: It snarls and bites and, if anything, is too good: Putting my plums in for a quick whirl and being a little too eager on the ‘go’ button’ resulted in a red-tinged mush and the realisation that this tool was a beast in princess clothing.

The novelty, sadly, wore off quickly when it took me as long to rinse out the container and wash the blades, which was a nervous act as they are sharper than Sweeney Todd’s steel, as I realised it probably would have been quicker to go ‘old school’ and just use a knife instead.

I then took a moment to survey the scene in our kitchen: The implements and gadgets that are designed to make life easier and which, somehow, do little but take up space on the surface on the off chance that someone will use it in the next six months before the mould sets in.

There were blenders which wouldn’t look out of place in the Ann Summers catalogue, coffee machines that now smelt of ‘off’ coffee, coffee bean grinders which I used once, before it opened up my system like a lion attacking a banana and rendered me glued to the porcelain for an hour or two, as well as electric knives, thermometers to check your meat temperature and items I could only dream of describing without a dashing of innuendo.

What a pointless exercise and expense this was as we have been roundly fooled into spending our hard earned on items that do little but induce stress by means of saving a nanosecond of time. And to think, in days yore, the grandmother would use a mangle and cook over an open stove, as I wonder how we became so lame that some effort extolled on a knife ultimately led to us being too posh to push.

And then I explored the cupboards and was delighted to see items that I haven’t used in years as, well, I had forgotten I owned them, as I vowed to give them a damn good cleaning before resurrecting them into the daily use domain by the close of play Friday. The egg omelette maker is a joy, despite it taking two hours to clean said item afterwards as the non-stick coating somehow tricked the word ‘non’ into the description.

But the crème de la creme, the daddy of all kitchen appliances, must be none other than the Breville deep fill sandwich toaster. Packing two slices of bread fully laden with marmite, cheese, ham, and a slither or two of vine ripened (what does that even mean?) tomatoes before pressing the catch down in a Geoff Capes style and hearing the click before burning the house down as it gets crisped to a cinder is a joy to behold.

So yes, the mini chopper is a thing of wonder, but sadly may soon end up in the under the kettle cupboard graveyard as the sandwich maker makes a return from the dead, only to go back in once I burn the inside of my mouth again on an item that is as hot as the molten lavaesque McDonald’s apple pie…