grrrr

so, gas ovens. there's an interesting topic.

well, we bought one and had a firm delivery date for yesterday. it arrived nice and early in the day, but didn't appear to come with a gas pipe. now up until recently, i always understood gas cookers to come with a hose poking out of the back of them, which you simply plug into the bayonet fitting on the wall. push down, turn, 'click' and robert is most certainly your mother's brother.

but no. bobby is no longer your cousin's dad.

you see, without an obvious gas hose, off i go to the plumb centre who sell me one for fifteen english pounds and reliably inform me that a new cooker doesn't come with one because it's against current legislation to fit it yourself.

how hard can it be?

well, it appears that this 'new legislation' has meant that manufacturers now make it deliberately difficult to fit yourself in order to keep their friends the CORGI men in business. [and no, I don't mean these corgi men or these corgi men.] Instead of moulding a hose safely onto the cooker in the factory, they now leave a screw-fit hole for your separate hose to be installed. having screwed in the hose and tightened hard with a spanner, all appeared well. but unfortunately, a very faint gas smell is...well...smellable if you put your nose right on the joint. and i mean very faint.

having looked online, it appears a liquid sealant is required, or at least some sort of tightness test performed by our canine-related friends to ensure safe installation. but why? what's wrong with a bayonet fitting? and even if the manufacturers do decide on a fully detachable hose, what's wrong with a bayonet fitting on both ends?! it's as easy as fitting a lightbulb.

but no.

all this new scheme therefore achieves is that it takes a very safe procedure (hose already attached to cooker, plug in a bayonet fitting, turn and 'click') and replaces it with a very-simple-looking-but-potentially-life-threatening-procedure (for the majority of men, who, like me, will see how simple it looks and do it themselves) in an attempt to create a cash-cow for Mr CORGI.

but here's the thing: the leak is so inconspicuous you don't notice it. even with my nose right next to the pipe, i was still questioning whether any gas was escaping at all. so it's not even obvious if you've done it wrong.

and at the end of the day, you pay. the upshot is that i will be down £80 for some tail-wagging man to put some sealant on a hose and screw it into a cooker. now if that's not a money-making scheme, i don't know what is.in the meantime, we still don't have a working oven. ho-hum.

grrrr. well let's just hope he doesn't make a dog's dinner of it...