My friend Kelson is a strange character. I always forget that, because he seems so normal on the surface, but underneath he’s a raging weirdo. His latest thing is having an extreme obsessions with baking, to the point that he’s getting up at 3am every day to stone-grind grains for the day’s bread while playing Bach records to his collection of sourdough cultures.
You think I’m pulling your leg? Well, I’m not. It’s all true, as confirmed by Maria, his wife of ten years. She confided in me that it’s gotten to the point where she’s tempted to install a second kitchen exclusively for Kelson’s early-morning antics. After all, it’s an ongoing thing – if it’s not baking, it’s brewing artisanal vinegars or curing wild-harvested mushrooms.
I guess it’s not really cool to write the guy off as strange. He’s just intensely passionate about his culinary interests, and that’s actually a lovely thing – just one that’s uncommon in suburban Melbourne. It also happens to leave Maria with limited access to the kitchen for day-to-day activities, like making a cup of tea in the morning.
So the idea of installing a special kitchen just for Kelson’s culinary experiments isn’t necessarily that far-fetched. It’s not that different to putting in a home gym or a sewing room, for example. In fact, I’m sure there’s a market for this kind of custom kitchen design, Melbourne being as rife with serious foodies as it is.
Although she’s slightly exasperated by the whole thing, Maria also expressed that Kelson’s bread is, in fact, off the chain. She said she wasn’t sure why he didn’t make this culinary stuff his career, seeing as he’s notably good at it and also obsessed with it. I get it, though. If there’s one thing I know about Kelson it’s that his career in IT is always secondary to what he gets up to in his spare time, and that’s the way he likes it.