Rural Life

New Cooker for Christmas

No - not a reference to my Christmas present from my beloved - more a howl of pain for trying to get stuff organised so that I can use my new cooker at Christmas and not have to eat dinner in the bathroom!

Back in September I ordered my lovely new cooker - a LaCanche - customised as befits a major element of our main room decor to our taste, so brushed steel knobs, brushed steel central heat plate and British Racing Green enamel bodywork.  It would take some time to be made and delivered to the kitchen suppliers, but not a problem apart from the plummeting Euro exchange rate.

As ours is a totally new gas installation (the year has been blighted by perpetual road works and similar), we have to get pipework installed and and a certificate of conformity before we can have gas and a meter.  The gas fitter is very busy but will fit us in on Monday, having been booked in September.

Once I have the certificate of conformity, Gaz de France will come round and put in my meter and put gas into the pipe - they have just asked if I can wait until the 30th December for that, as I am not really a priority.

The gas cooker arrives on Monday or Tuesday - it is big.  It will go where my current crockery and ingredients shelves go.  Those shelves will move on a temporary basis to where the old cooker (a bit of a beast like a small range but with a gas bottle hidden away in it) currently sits, once the new cooker is linked up with the gas and is working.  As the final stage, the old cooker will go into a cellar until we can clean it up to sell it or think of another use for it.  Think of one of those children's puzzles with the 15 squares to move round to get the numbers in the right order - that is how our house works, and finding the space to move a block into to move others around is a nightmare.

So if I waited until the 30th to get linked up, all the crockery and ingredients would be spread over the living room and at risk of being broken or eaten by cats, while I have a huge and gorgeous cooker that can't be used and I try to produce Christmas dinner in no space at all on the old cooker.  As I generally do goose with 7 vegetables as the main event, life starts to get difficult.  Like I say, the bathroom could become the dining room.

The lovely lady from Gaz de France did try the line of there are little old ladies without any heating out there who are a priority over me, and I respect her for it (although I suspect those little old ladies have other sources of heat - no French peasant does cold).  But not enough not to be a bit insistent on having my meter next week.  Of course it could all go horribly wrong and I could be begging not to have the meter put in until the 30th, but I hope not.

Imagine below in British Racing Green - you can see why it is urgent!

The Drove Road

I finally got round to getting the photos developed from my summer travels in the UK.  I spent some of the wettest weeks of July and September and November (not strictly summer but similar weather conditions in each month) in the UK for work.  However it was a privilege for part of that time to be spent in Somerset and I stayed at the Coombe House Hotel near Nether Stowey twice - much recommended.

From my roost at Nether Stowey I had to go to Taunton a few times and there are two possible routes.  The sensible but very long one is along proper roads around the Quantocks and via Bridgewater, the not so sensible route is over the top of the Quantocks on what some might call roads but are really more like narrow tubes between high hedges.  Naturally I opted for the dangers of the narrow roads over the hills.

This did mean that I found my way back to my favourite place when I was a child - Triscombe Stone up on the Drove Road that follows the line of the Quantocks.  I did a couple of walks up there - my risk analysis for both walks was that I was crazy!  It was wet, visibility was minimal as the clouds sat on the hills, there was no one else around, my only waterproof was a high visibility vest and mobile phone signals were dodgy at best.  Still, you are only young and foolish once, right?  And I survived.

So here is the Drove Road - a wonderfully atmospheric place.  One day I will walk the whole of it from end to end, while I am still young and foolish enough to.