Please buzz me if you need me for intrinsically complicated food-carrying manouvers involving paper napkins and tea towels. I am asleep, but will wake at the touch of a button.

At work, the waitresses all wear little plastic devices strapped to the apron, hidden somewhere near the hip-bone. This device vibrates (buzzzzes) when the kitchen people want you to come and take food away. The kitchen staff often go over-board and buzz me constantly throughout a shift, and I stand infront of customers vibrating, and attempting not to snarl.

When I am not at work, I wear a phantom buzzer. At home in my bathtub, emersed in almost-scalding water, enveloped in a shroud of steam, almost asleep, I feel a faint buzz, which I realise afterwards does not, and will never, exist. I leap almost athletically from the bath, and shout, yes, food, I am coming, is it hot, will I need my teatowel? My family is getting used to this; it happens at least twice a day.

Where would we be without tea towels?