Monday 3 October 2016

It's not cool to have an AGA


Someone has just described the governance of Britain since the last war as 'managed decline', and I thought what a good blog title that would make. It would make a good autobiography title too, minus the word 'managed'.

There are two very brief periods in every year when it is possible to spread butter on bread without difficulty in our unheated house, and we have just passed the last one. I know when Summer has arrived, because it has to be kept in the fridge and behaves like the Winter sort for about five and a half months.

My friend who lives in Mary Berry's old house on the outskirts of Bath, has an AGA which, if turned off, takes 48 hours to come back to usable temperature. She has no back-up gas oven or water-heater, so her butter has to be kept in the enormous fridge right the way through the year. The fridge is also - mercifully - an ice-maker.

Step-Daughter and her husband were really looking forward to house-sitting and feeding the dogs for a couple of weeks this Summer, because the place is set in idyllic grounds which back onto a small forest next to a tranquil lake, in a secluded and ancient valley.

When they arrived it was great weather with glorious sunshine, but they could not have the doors and windows - which are vast - open because of the dogs. Even at night, the temperature in the huge kitchen was unbearable because the AGA belts out about 120 degrees of heat, 24/7. Within about two hours, they could not wait to go home to central Bath.

The AGA runs on electricity, and after the first couple of bills came in when they first bought the house, the supplier admitted that they had them down as a rural pizzaria. This actually happened.

The first morning that they stayed, husband turned the AGA off, having had no appreciable sleep all night, and that night when they turned it back on to cook was when they realised how long it took to warm up again. It was still stifling in the kitchen, but not hot enough to cook inside the AGA, so they had sandwiches for two nights - even with caged and constantly yapping dogs, and with windows and doors open, it was still about 90 degrees in the dark.

When the owner returned, I asked why on earth they did not have a back-up cooker for the Summer, plus an ordinary water-heater like everyone else.

"But where would we put it?" she asked.

"In place of the AGA!", shouted husband.

If I have told you this story before, think yourself lucky you are not poor Terry Jones's son, who helped his dad on stage last night to pick up an award at the Welsh BAFTAs.

20 comments:

  1. We had an ancient AGA in a house of ours. My husband was going to get rid of it until friends of ours said we should try and sell it. This monster was vintage 1930s I think. The response was amazing and we had to set up appointments for people to view it. Two people that came almost came to blows over who was there first! In the end we sold it for £400 and they had to pay removal and dismantling costs, which must have been exorbitant!

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    1. It is amazing what people will pay to be so horribly inconvenienced. Status symbol maybe - but with no full-time cook?

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  2. Mary berry's old home.....I would have creamed my knickers

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    1. It's a bit sad. She turned up one day unexpectedly and asked if she could have a little peep inside. When she got to the room where she and her kids sat around having dinner, she burst into tears. One of her children was killed (in a car accident, I think) and it brought back old memories of him as a child. Poor thing.

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    2. He went out for the Sunday papers and never came back. Crashed the car.

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    3. Yes, now you mention it that sounds familiar. A terrible way to miss lunch.

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  3. I was almost in danger to wish one (all those years I had an abonnement of "Good Housekeeping" left traces; Cosmpolitan, British version, in another way, too) -- though the pink AGA I showed two posts ago would not have fitted in colour. Nor in my hand baggage.

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  4. What happened to Rachel's blog??? It is off.

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    1. I've just been there - it is on again. Was strange, because blogger officially said: "This blog has been removed" etc.

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    2. She goes AWOL on a regular basis. Nothing to worry about.

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    3. Re your articles - if I wrote for Cosmo or G.H. then I would probably have an AGA from duty.

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  5. My Aga is oil fired and I never turn it off. Luckily we have a big farmhouse kitchen and in addition I am a very cold mortal - luckily. My only other means of cooking is an electric hotplate.

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    1. Much more sensible - both the oil and the hotplate. I used to have a Raeburn, which was complemented by a gas oven when things went wrong - which they always did.

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  6. I never new that the Aga Khan needed work .
    Is that a photo of him since moving to your area, gosh you have treated him badly.

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  7. Isn't odd how something that was once a practical item of equipment can get caught up in a style net?

    Decades ago, I was fortunate to get to know an elderly couple who lived in a cottage next door to my late Surrey friend. The husband had been a gardener on a large nearby estate and their cottage had been part of his salary. They heated the little cottage in which they'd raised their family via a Raeburn. They gathered wood for the Raeburn from the National Forest that bordered the end of their garden.

    Sometime I might write a post about this dear couple, but still don't really want to write about the very sad ending.

    Cro wrote about memory today, and now you have allowed one of my own to surface.

    Best wishes.

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    1. I would rather have a Raeburn. You can burn anything in them and I did. Raeburns bring back memories for me too, but you can never go back. I tried.

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  8. Ours ran on little oval lumps of coal (I can't remember what they were called), and it heated up quite quickly.

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