It must be a gift...

No, not any particular talent of mine, just that I was driving home this evening struggling for ideas for blog posts and tonight, as if it were a gift from the blog gods themselves, two great excuses for a post landed, the first one quite literally on the doormat.

You see it all started at the weekend when I decided I'd finally had enough of my knob falling off. (Sorry cheap gag there for the taking). I've only had my cooker for a year and have already had to call the engineer out on control knob/ignition issues, but having paid for 5 years extra cover, I'm determined to get my value out of it. In hindsight it perhaps isn't the most finely crafted kitchen appliance in the world but the service centre staff are very helpful and prompt when required. As I only needed a replacement control knob, I suggested that they simply post one out to me to avoid them sending an engineer out (and my needing to take time off work).

It arrived today and I couldn't help but chuckle when I read the label (click on picture for clearer view).



Of course, now I'm worried that by installing the item myself, I may have invalidated my warranty...


So with supper duly prepared in my newly-repaired oven, I sat in front of the TV just in time to watch Nigella Bites on UKTV



Ahem. There are a couple of things I ought to point out here (now you're making up your own). Firstly, my interests in Nigella are not [entirely] as you may think - I genuinely enjoy her relaxed style of cooking and the fact that she cooks the sort of food we all like to eat. Secondly, for some reason my cable TV provider is transmitting audio descriptions for the visually impaired on her programme and I can't switch it off.

OK, not terribly interesting in itself, but the guy doing the descriptions clearly had a "less than culinary" interest in Ms Lawson and was hysterical to listen to:

"The luscious Nigella walks across the kitchen..."
"Earthy Nigella roughly chops herbs with a mezzaluna..."
"Curvy Nigella sashays towards the fridge..."
"Nigella casts a come hither look towards the camera..."
"Delicious Nigella takes the sticky mixture in her elegantly manicured hands..."

All genuine quotes, I promise. Now let's not kid ourselves, I'm sure that Nigella is perfectly aware of her ample charms and maybe does flirt with the viewer, but the commentary was bordering on audio soft porn.

Whatever that sounds like...