Bill Bryson on the Quirks of Home

Looking around my house, I was startled and a little appalled to realise how little I knew about the domestic world around me. I had absolutely no idea why, for example, out of all the spices in the world, we have such an abiding attachment to salt and pepper. Why not pepper and cardamom, say, or salt and cinnamon? And why do forks have four tines and not three or five? There must be reasons for these things. Suddenly the house seemed a place of mystery to me.

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