Sometimes life throws a curve ball or, as we who love Cricket would say – Bowls a Googly. Late October I was contacted by our Energy supplier, British Gas, to inform me that they were legally required to change our Gas and Electricity meters. I duly made an appointment for the change to be carried out on 6th December. On the due date the engineers showed up a little late, although they did keep me informed so I could plan around their late arrival. All I was expecting was what was in the request – a change of meters and that was that. But, once they were on site it became clear that there was more to it. Apparently, they were also required to check all the gas appliances for safety. I think British Gas could have been more up front about this requirement because it places the engineer carrying out the work and their customer in a situation that could become confrontational given that the customer was not pre-informed of this requirement.
The Engineer decided that our cooker was not burning cleanly (yellow observed in the flames) and duly informed me that he would have to disconnect it as it was not safe to use. I was very surprised and caught off guard because I was not expecting this as British Gas had not pre-warned that this inspection was part of the procedure. I’ll admit that I was initially a little sharp with the engineer but the old-school telephone engineer in me soon recognised that he was only doing his job and we were able to progress through the rest of the meter installation in a friendly manner. It should be noted that the job is not yet complete – due to faulty items there were no smart meters available to be supplied at the time of this work. I was informed that I will be contacted in 30 days to arrange for these to be supplied. I hope British Gas do this promptly otherwise they can expect a complaint.
So, where does this leave us in the run-up to Christmas without our main means of preparing meals? Initially, with a major issue as all we had was a microwave and, unless we rebuild our kitchen, no possibility of finding a replacement cooker to fit in the available space. Sometimes you have to go with the flow and sometimes you have to move forwards with plans that were already in the back of the mind. We had decided sometime ago that our future cooking arrangements would be all electric. This was to be a catalyst to drive us part way down that road.
The evening of the scrapping of our cooker we ordered Pizza – there wasn’t a lot of time to do much else. The following day, Alasdair and I went off to the local shopping mall and bought some cooking items for the microwave and that evening I cooked a form of bean stew served with wraps. It wasn’t perfect – the onions and spices needed a bit more time – but it was the start to a learning process.
Since then and after a lot of research, we have added an air-fryer to our kitchen equipment and have significantly expanded the range of things we can cook without a gas-stove. For many families though, that would still leave the open question of cooking the traditional Christmas meal. That is something that British Gas and the Gas Safe regulations have taken from us – or would have were it not for the fact that we don’t normally eat a traditional Christmas meal such as Turkey with all the trimmings. Whilst we’re still working out what to cook on the day – and my Son has an idea in his sights – we will be ok because of our resourceful approach to adversity.
Should you ever find yourself in this situation remember, you can do almost everything with a microwave and an air-fryer. You just need to learn how to Juggle🤣
Images from Finchley 