A watched pot never boils

Emma: (standing in the kitchen, arms folded, staring at the hob) See? It’s true—“a watched pot never boils.” I’ve been staring at this water for five minutes, and not a single bubble.

James: (laughs) Emma, that’s not superstition, that’s just your patience giving up on you. The pot will boil whether you watch it or not. Physics doesn’t take tea breaks.

Emma: Oh, come off it. You can’t tell me you’ve never noticed—when you step away, suddenly it’s boiling over like Vesuvius. But the second you stand and glare at it, nothing.

James: That’s not the pot being cheeky, that’s your brain playing tricks. When you’re watching, every second feels longer. It’s like waiting for a bus. The 29 feels like it takes forever, but as soon as you look at your phone, the bus appears.

Emma: Exactly! See? Same principle. The bus and the pot have a sort of… mischievous timing.

James: Or maybe it’s because when you’re distracted, time just passes faster. That’s not magic—that’s psychology.

Emma: (raising an eyebrow) Then explain why last week, I turned my back for thirty seconds, and the pasta water went volcanic. Kitchen looked like a science experiment gone wrong.

James: That’s just the lid trapping the steam. More pressure, faster boiling. If you’d been watching, you would’ve seen it happen. The pot didn’t wait until you left to misbehave.

Emma: You make it sound so boring when you explain it like that. I prefer to think of it as the pot being shy. Like a child—it won’t perform while you’re staring at it.

James: (grinning) If my kettle were shy, I’d be having a very cold cup of tea every morning.

Emma: Well, it gives you a reason to step away and do something useful instead of hovering in the kitchen. Maybe that’s the wisdom behind the saying.

James: Okay, I’ll give you that—there is good advice in it: stop fussing, let it do its thing. But it’s not because the pot knows you’re watching. It’s just because your brain has better things to do than count the seconds.

Emma: (smiling) Fine. You stick with your physics and psychology. I’ll stick with my shy pot theory. Makes life more entertaining.

James: Deal. But if you ever start whispering encouragement to your saucepan, I’m staging an intervention.

Emma: (laughs) Don’t tempt me. “Come on, darling, just a little simmer for me…”

James: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I never accept Emma’s dinner invitations without hazard pay.