The last 49 years, on Christmas afternoon, I have been absent from the lounge, where the S&H and latterly, just the OH, occasionally both plus the DIL and the grandchildren were to be found, playing with the toys I had bought them, and no one ever asked where I was.
Spoiler alert (if you wanted to guess) or soiler alert (if you have already guessed) – I was cleaning the oven.
This was not the only occasion in the year. For all the years the S&H was at home, except on Miniatura weekends, we always had Sunday lunch. Sunday lunch being much the same as Christmas lunch in that it featured some large joint of meat, or a whole bird, that required at some point open roasting without a cover, and roast potatoes, ditto, and various other items in the cooking of which said items were wont to spray fat, juices and other components around the cavity of the oven.
Therefore, for most Sundays, for many years, I was absent on Sunday afternoon, from the lounge where the OH and the S&H were watching a film, usually, because I was cleaning the oven.
This paid off. When we were young and poor I twice sold ovens, when we moved house, for what I had paid for them when new.
I thought I was setting a good example. Foolishly. To do so I probably needed to drag the oven into the lounge in front of the TV and clean it there, regardless of the frowning and craning.
Since I became mostly vegetarian the OH has taken to cooking. Not to washing up, or to cleaning the oven. However three times since we have owned the current built-in oven with the two layer glass door, he has exclaimed over the filth trapped between the glass layers, and, contrary to the manufacturer’s instructions, entirely dismantled the door, having removed it, which is in the instruction booklet, from the body of the oven by grasping the door and lifting it off the hinges.
As this exercise is infrequent, I had had to clean the oven prior to cooking the turkey and said so.
Accordingly the OH decided that he would dismantle the oven door and clean it. The day he chose to do so was the eve of New Year’s Eve, while I was out in the cold, returning the shirt he hated so much he wouldn’t try it on, and giving donations to the Air Ambulance shop of various, in some cases, new, clothes that I thought would be suitable for New Year’s Eve. So did the volunteer in the shop, and we had a bit of a chat. The other shop was out of town in the other direction, through all the traffic jams caused by all the other people returning gifts.
Therefore, I had been away some time, in the cold, and was looking forward to a hot cup of tea and a sit down.
I returned unable to put a few basic food purchases away, as every flat surface in the kitchen was covered with bits of oven door. Of the OH the only sign was a note saying that he had gone to an electrical retailers.
As one so often does in the middle of cleaning the oven door, or, as it was now, a bread board covered in screws, my screwdriver set with all the screwdrivers out, two separate sheets of glass, a metal frame and some metal bits, fixins and doodads.
I put the food away. The OH returned, furious. He had been to an electrical retailer, purveyor of a similar oven, who, very uncharitably, had not allowed him to dismantle the oven in the showroom to see where the two rubber thingys went, that he couldn’t find a place for. Although seething, he managed to tell me that he even knew the name for them, because one of the many electrical retailers he had telephoned had vouchsafed unto him that they were the rubber glass separators.
After a couple of minutes of fiddling around I found out where they went, but being a woman, I apparently knew nothing.
It would, he shouted, help if we had kept the instruction booklet or, even, which we wouldn’t have, we’d have thrown it away, the receipt, so we could tell the second help robot he was now phoning how old it was, or even, without removing the oven from the housing, what model it was.
So I went into the kitchen and fetched the receipt, so he could tell the robot, which, not having been married to him for forty nine and a half years, had kept hanging up on him, the model number and the fact that it was fourteen years old.
All very well, he shouted, having a receipt, what he really need was the instructions.
So I fetched them.
They did not have instructions for disassembly of the factory assembled door, which I knew, but the OH was frustrated to discover.
After some debate and another demonstration, by me, of the logical place to put the rubber door separators (separating the two glass doors, so each door fitted neatly into the little groove intended for the door to go into, dontchaknow), the OH decided to reassemble the door without them, because, being a woman, I know nothing.
So, in between phoning robots, because everyone should have a hobby, he reassembled the door without the rubber door separators, and then, as an encore, couldn’t get the hinges back in the hinge holes. I was co-opted to help but gave up after one go of being shouted at, I left him to do it himself and went into the lounge to watch TV with the sound off so the most recent robot would be heard when it rang.
Shortly thereafter, the OH emerged from the kitchen and went to his shed, returning with a mole grip wrench and a hammer. Ideal oven cleaning tools.
Some unknown person had twisted one of the hinges when removing the door.
I did not ring a robot and ask if it had done it, neither did I phone a friend. I waited until the OH emerged in triumph to announce, much in the same vein as Spartacus raising the troops, that he had returned the oven door to its accustomed spot, on the front of the oven, minus the rubber door separators, as no place could be found to put them, and they were now on the windowsill, awaiting instruction from a robot, electrical retailer, or other expert, or anyone who knew ovens and had male genitalia.
The ideal time, I have been informed, to buy a new oven will be in the January sales, when I have no money at all, having spent it on sixty Christmas cards (received twenty-eight), gifts for the OH (horrible shirt, returned and other acceptable item) vast amounts of gifts and money for the S&H, Gkids, DIL (received, two jars of jam) and, wildly, two new vests for myself (fashionista that I am, waiting for the call from Anna Wintour, or similar). (The scar is healing nicely, thank you for asking.) (Fringes are back again.)
Nevertheless, we will be in a different electrical retailers (not the one who is pissed off with the OH) looking at built-in ovens in 2026, which will roll into view in eight and a half hours locally; Sydney Australia, where they’ll all be round the local OP Shop donating the BBQ that exploded with the turkey in it, already having seen it.
Happy New Year wherever you are reading this. As we close the door on 2025, hinges permitting, I’m sure we’re all hoping 2026 won’t turn out to be a turkey.
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