AS I write this I'm preparing to do battle with the cooker over the festive period.
The cooker is actually collectively known in the family as 'that b..... cooker' because it's fairly new and we have had nothing but trouble with it since it arrived.
Now I'm of an age when I can say with deep conviction 'they don't make 'em like that any more', remembering things past.
Things like my mother's vacuum cleaner which was a monster machine so heavy that it took one's whole strength to lug up the stairs, so noisy it sounded like an aeroplane warming up for take-off, so fierce that when you switched it on it was liable to drag you into the airing cupboard. But it faithfully sucked up every bit of dirt within 100 feet and the odd passing cat to boot. I rued the day I stupidly got rid of it for a featherlight plastic job which baulked at anything heavier than a dust ball and was apt to block itself solid if you ran it over more than one carpet in a day.
Then there was my old twin tub washing machine. Not much to look at on the outside but it could wash anything you offered it and had a spinner that didn't stop spinning if your washing was just slightly off centre. It might have had only a couple of settings - ie wash or spin - rather than the complicated and bewildering set of instructions on modern automatic machines (I've never quite worked out what pre-wash soak half load means) but it did the job. What's more, it didn't remove the wire bits from your bra with alarming regularity neither did it chew the buttons off your best blouses.
I was persuaded against my better judgement that automatics were much more suitable to a modern lifestyle, and said goodbye to old faithful if slightly battered twin tub and bought an automatic which came with a promise that my washing would never be the same again. It wasn't, especially my Wonder-bras which quickly lost their Wonder.
And so to cookers. The first cooker I ever owned was a gas cooker. We bought it in rather a novel way. In those days we had both moved to a new town to work on the local paper and if you worked in a new town you were classed as a key worker and could get a house. In fact if you had a job and were breathing you got a house. It sounds like a fairytale but it was true. All you did was write to the housing department and in about two weeks you got a letter back with an appointment to see the housing manager.
This appointment was really only a formality, because the housing manager was waiting with a smile and after asking a couple of questions about which part of town you fancied she produced three or four sets of keys with address tags on them, handed them to you and said you could go and view that very moment. What is even more astonishing was that she said if you didn't like the houses she was offering you could go back and she'd find you another four, or even more, until you were satisfied. These really were the good old days.
Walking out of the office with our keys we were intercepted by two men with clipboards, one from the gas company and one from the electricity company, who politely asked if we would be needing a cooker and if so, which sort. They quickly explained that we didn't have to decide now but depending on our preference one of them would happily drive us round to see the houses.
We said gas, and so it was the gas man who ushered us into his car and we looked at four houses, finally choosing one of them and ordering a gas cooker. I suppose some people cheated and had the gas man take them round and then bought electric but they were obviously willing to take the gamble.
The cooker in question was a solid metal and enamel one, shining white and until the day I left it behind to move to Cornwall performed like an Olympic star. Nothing dropped off it. Its pilot light didn't go out should a mild draught hit it. It cooked on all shelves in the oven and the grill was easy to use with nice solid handles which didn't buckle under the weight of a cutlet. Furthermore all the bits came apart and cleaned easily.
Since then I have either not lived anywhere with gas or where I've lived has already had a cooker. This one, when we bought it, was the first new one for nearly 40 years, which is probably why I had to be picked up from a dead faint after finding out how much it cost. Approximately ten times the price of the first one.
So what's wrong with it? Firstly, it has a waist level grill compartment. Not my waist, of course, but that's beside the point. It also has a grill pan with a detachable handle. Not a solid, find a screwdriver, type of detachable handle but one which, if the grill pan is slightly knocked, detaches itself very promptly. Certainly not designed to take the weight of five pork chops. The handle, which is all metal, also gets very hot, so after being branded several times with it, and losing it countless times in various drawers, it has been dispensed with. There is also only one position for the grill pan, not good news for a cook who might like to be able to get things closer to the flames on occasions, but then one suspects this stove has not been designed by anyone who has cooked anything more complicated than a boiled egg.
These are all petty annoyances, but the main problem is that the grill compartment gets so hot you can actually cook casseroles in it (it's also called a 'plate warmer', but the heat is so intense you could actually fire plates in it, should you have a handy potters' wheel in the kitchen).
Couple this with the fact that the white lining of the oven went deep orange within a week, the kitchen cupboards next to the cooker have begun to singe and the outer shell was too hot to touch, then there was some suspicion that all was not right.
Wrong, say the manufacturers, who in fairness I won't name because they have been quite good and sent several lots of people round. All of them suggested that we had been turning the oven up too high, which to me is like saying that if you cook on anything higher than regulo six your kitchen cupboards will burst into flames, but to them was perfectly logical. I've had this kind of argument with manufacturers before, the best one was a shoe company who seriously suggested that it was quite normal for walking shoes to leak if you went out in the rain in them.
I won't bore you with too many details but since our first complaint we've had a new oven door, new lining, and last time a new top, a fan put in the grill compartment and several other bits. What they aren't prepared to do is replace the cooker, or admit that there might be a teeny problem with it.
In fact one of the men looked so distressed when I said it was the worst cooker I had ever used that we thought we might have to sit him down and give him a group hug and a cup of cocoa.
Happy New Year to you all.