COOKER

I bought a cooker today. The D asked me too. ‘There’s something growing in it,’ she said as we stood in the kitchen for her to make her case in front of the old one. One of her friends is staying and arrived today, we were late meeting her at the station. When we got back to the flat I made a cup of tea for the three of us. When I’d handed them each a mug I said, ‘Shall I leave you to it?’ I’m very awkward when I meet people the first time like walking on a knife edge.
Drove the length of Filton Avenue before stopping at the The Locker on the Gloucester Road. They had one second hand for eighty-nine, the clock didn’t work, and they told me how to connect it. I said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ and left the shop.
It was about what I wanted to spend but seeing what I’d get…Oh, it was clean and the woman looking over the top of her glasses or fiddling with some papers on the table she sat behind said, ‘We do a lot of business with him.’
Nothing in Fishponds, well, not until we went to Curry’s. The one we chose they didn’t have any in stock but the branch at Winterstoke did.
‘You want to pay for it here then pick it up there?’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
At Winterstoke they had two on display. One had a dent the other a dodgy foot. We got twenty pounds off the already sale price for the one with the dodgy foot which I fixed when we got back.
The cooker was being shrink wrapped when I asked, ‘Does it come with a cable to connect it up?’
‘No,’ he said having had to ask. ‘But you can get one at Wickes’s, you know where it is?’
‘I’ve just bought a cooker and it doesn’t come with a cable to connect it?’ I said incredulous. ‘That’s so me,’ I said later, ‘getting all excited…’
At Wickes’ I said, ‘You an electrician?’ to the man looking at the cables near the lighting section.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but I know something about it.’
I told him what I needed and he showed me the cable, ‘This one should do the job,’ he said.
The manual said a qualified electrician only should connect the cooker to the mains but the D did it.