My mother was one for gadgets. She had things that sliced your potatoes into thin waves, things that cut your cucumber into curls and things that shaved your onions into spirals. She had nutmeg graters, garlic presses, mint leaf crushers and, yes, olive pitters and a weird orange/lemon peeler with a spike and a handle.
She also liked the things you get in those "Better Living" leaflets. I remember one Christmas she bought me a pair of, sort of, detachable crampons for walking on ice. They were a small plate of metal spikes that was held under the sole of your shoe by an elastic strap. They proved very useful, as it happens, as I'm a complete wimp on ice ever since a bad fall many years ago.
She bought a blow-up bath pillow that wouldn't stick on the bath and a shower step-stool which was useless as she didn't have a walk-in shower, a toothpaste squeezer - and she had false teeth! -and a device for compressing all your little bits of left-over soap into one, reconstructed bar, which promptly fell back into little bits of left-over soap when you tried to use it.
I can't look at a Kleen-e-ze catalogue without thinking of my mum, the gadget queen.
