We have just lit our first stove of the autumn. The weather forecast got it wrong about it not raining today in north Essex. It drizzled periodically through the morning, while a succession of peeved and damp cats shuttled in and out from the garden, torn between hope that it was not raining and irritation that it actually was. Then it poured, and they all came in, wet and indignant, apart from Our Ginger who had prudently spent the morning snoozing in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, as if on cue, the Aga has broken down. Yesterday afternoon it began to make a strange whirring noise, which it is not supposed to do. An Aga is essentially silent. If it makes any kind of noise then something is wrong. The Systems Administrator came and listened to the noise and made ominous pronouncements about bearings, and the fan that is supposed to redistribute hot air from the electric core to the rest of the machine. When we came downstairs this morning we found that the Aga had switched itself off in the night.
You could say thank goodness for modern safety cut-outs. I remember coming downstairs once when I was a child and lifting the lid of my mother's anthracite powered Aga to find the whole hotplate glowing cherry red, and about twenty years ago a faulty back boiler exploded at the pub at Lamb's Corner (now closed) causing injuries. And at least since we are not after all on holiday this week the poor old housesitters haven't found themselves without a cooker half way through their sit. True, we do have a microwave, a bottom-of-the-range model, by now ancient, but there is no back-up oven or gas ring.
The Systems Administrator said he would have to order a new fan, and I said that next week's funeral party would have to make do with a cold collation, and the SA looked shocked and said the fan shouldn't take that long to arrive. The SA knows how to fit a replacement fan, at least in theory, since the chap who came to mend the Aga last time the fan failed showed him how and said it was not very difficult. He was a specialist in electric Agas, and did most of his business in France installing them for English families who had bought properties over there. It was nice of him to teach the SA how to maintain his own Aga, far nicer than the man from the local stove shop who used to charge me seventy quid to come and poke spider's webs out of a venturi tube with a paintbrush, and I fear that with Brexit his business may be suffering.
In the meantime we put the lamb and the chicken the SA had been intending to cook in the freezer, and will have to heat up the remains of last night's curry in the microwave. I ventured into Colchester to buy pitta bread to eat with the curry, since neither of us fancied trying to microwave rice, and called in at The Range to get some small cyclamen for the shelf in the porch. I found I was out of step with the seasons at The Range, where they have already got to Christmas, leapfrogging Halloween and Bonfire Night, and there were only seven pots of small white cyclamen left and one of them was at death's door. Luckily I only wanted six. I'd have preferred pure white without any pink at the base of the petals, which some of them had, but decided I didn't feel strongly enough about it to embark on a full blown Quest.
I did have a stroke of last minute luck elsewhere. I had been greatly taken with a tunic from Seasalt because the pattern was so lovely, a 1950s inspired design of greenish-blue and black elliptical leaves on a burnt orange ground, but by the time I got round to thinking about it again they had sold out of every size except 18, and then the entire garment vanished from their website, suggesting it was not coming back any time soon. I did not strictly need a new tunic, but I liked it very much, and felt rather pathetic that the month so far had been rubbish one way and another. Then I remembered that John Lewis stock some Seasalt designs, and had a look on their website, and lo and behold they had eight left in a size 12. So I ordered one yesterday, and collected it from Waitrose along with buying the pitta bread.
I know that psychological research says that acquiring objects does not make us happy, and that we should focus on personal relationships and experiences, but I think it depends partly on how many objects you acquire in total. In the year to date total additions to my wardrobe had comprised one pair of short wellington boots, one pack of boot socks, a pack of fleece insoles, some Danish felt house shoes, one pair of jeans (in a sale), one pair of sandals, a multipack of Tesco knickers and another of socks,two cheap wristwatches that both misted up, and two t-shirts. In that context a new dress was quite exciting.
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