Ovenless.

After the oven caught fire a week or so ago - why, yes, it was a tad exciting but fortunately I was in the kitchen so was able to deal with it quickly - I have been left without an oven. The flu like virus I came down with shortly after has meant I haven't been able to replace it yet. I've done the research now and so it's only a matter of getting to the shops to have a look at the shortlisted ones before we - and by that I mean I, although Pisces thinks his opinion counts even though he never uses the oven - make a final decision.

You'd think that choosing an oven would be fairly simple, wouldn't you, but I've learned a few things over the years and I have some very specific requirements. Firstly it has to be self cleaning because life is too short to waste on cleaning an oven, it needs to have controls that aren't likely to snap off - ask me why I'm even thinking about that sometime and I'll be happy to fill you in - and it must have an internal grill that can be used without having the door open - again you're hearing the voice of experience. Apart from that it can be relatively simple since I don't want twenty different cooking functions  - and I've seen some that have at least that. I have no idea what you'd use most of them for and I have no intention of finding out.

In the meantime while I've been trying to slot in time to go to buy the oven I've discovered I also need to buy a new washing machine. My existing one is still working but the noises it's making are, to put it mildly, alarming and, given it's fourteen years old, it's probably wiser to buy a new one than to spend on what would obviously be an expensive repair. They says bad things come in threes so my fingers are crossed that this time nothing else is going to die on me.

As you can imagine being without an oven has limited my cooking somewhat but it has also brought back memories because when we were newlyweds and moved into our new home the first unpleasant discovery we made was that the stove didn't work. This was in the days before houses were inspected before purchase - and I'm not going to tell you how long ago that was. Luckily, since we had no money for luxury items like stoves, we had been given two electric frypans as wedding presents and that was how all our meals were cooked for the next year.

So today I've been reliving the past a bit having brought out my electric frypan - a much fancier version than my first ones - and baked a tasty meal in it. I'm not so enamoured of it that I won't be going oven shopping this week, though. Nostalgia is all very well but convenience beats it any day.