h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A Christmas miracle occurred today, no, seriously it did.

We'd actually been organised this year and had everything bought for Christmas with weeks to go. Food bought and time to relax on the run up, first time in years my shifts had seen me actually off til Boxing Day!

Then we all manage to catch a nasty flu type bug. Never mind all the hard works done!

Three days ago our beautifully stylishly designed range cooker decided to have a break from all that stylish Italian perfection and stopped working. We weren't particularly thrilled at the news.

No problem, we have super duper stylishly expensive Italian range cooker insurance with the stylish, and probably very handsome/pretty people at DeLonghi.

Apparently the Yuletide holidays start a bit early if you stylishly work for the Italian manufacturers! No chance of getting an engineer (stylish or otherwise) out to you before the 28th....but that's three days after Christmas...when we're supposed to be cooking for the flu ridden family....you know, Christmas Day? Baby Jesus? Turkey etc etc?

We were stylishly informed that they'd get an engineer our...hopefully before the New Year. But what about our sleek insurance package?

Hold the line. Got through to a very stylish help desk, (probably all Italian brushed chrome and smoked glass), who smugly informed us that the insurance would cover us bringing out a non-Italian engineer, obviously not as glamorous or stylish, call out charges not covered but that's what you get for not having your cooker blow up at a more convenient time for DeLonghi, and wished us good luck getting someone out before Santa calls.

Miracle of miracles we did actually find someone to call out. Dick Turpin rates but the turkey is waiting!

Hmmmmm, Italian, mmmmm, have to see if stylishly complicated electronic gubbins were in stock. Give you a call back on Monday if we can get them, have to ring DeLonghi! Images of the stylishly unoccupied brushed steel and smoked glass desk, beautifully designed phone echoing in the deserted but very stylish call center.

Plans B,C and D were put in place. From cooking meal at friends and family's houses and dashing back home to serve, a biker mate offered to park his mobile home on our path so we could use his camping oven (obviously have to chop the bird up and cook everything in tiny portions, but the offer was genuine and appreciated), buy a new cooker, but getting it delivered and installed in time?

How about getting a worktop oven? Mmmm may work if, if we can find one that's big enough.

Not looking forward to a very snotty, headachy search but Ho Ho hum.. Finally found one not too far away. Went on line and found it was half price too!

Sunday. Gridlock. Last minute shoppers!

Set out early to fight our way through the panicking hordes. Jingle All the Way with Arnie in our heads.

Hit the approach to the shopping area. Totally bloody chaos. The sounds of horns rising with blood pressures.

Never mind, got loads of time, planned to sit in traffic for hours, drive around looking for a space for hours and then fight to get home for hours.

No point in getting upset. Bloody DeLonghi engineers are probably sitting in front of their stylish tellies, watching a stylish drama and sipping bloody mochachocalattes!

Ooh, a gap! Some kind soul letting us in. Thank you kind sir!

Car par at a standstill, hi-viz dudes directing shoppers around in a holding pattern.

Misery. And it's raining!

What? Us? Now? Great!

Hi-viz dude waves us to a recently vacated space mere feet away from the electrical store.

Queues out the door though.

Staff at door ask if we're browsing, know what we want or have ordered on line for pick up.

On line pick up, wife flashes eight billion digit code on phone. Twenty seconds. Here you go, Merry Christmas!

Mini oven in car, very impressed, now the battle to get out of the gridlocked car park.

What? Us? Now? Here?

Hi-viz dudette has opened barrier to let a delivery van in and cheerfully waves us out of the delivery exit! Great!

Roundabout a nightmare....no word of a lie....each and every car cheerfully waves us out and we get back home just twenty minutes after leaving.

A true (doesn't take much to please us after the week we've had!) Christmas miracle!

Mini oven works (panic checking just in case!) but sadly not big enough for bird. Ah well cook that at the in laws and do everything else at home.

Maybe there will be another miraculous event on Christmas Eve and Dick Turpin has contacted a non-Italian employee and gets Our cooker to work, who knows?

A big thank you to all those who are working over Christmas!

To everyone else enjoy your holidays.....unless you work at DeLonghi that is!

Oh, lord, what a saga. I am so sorry to hear that.

Have you considered....

- Deep-fat frying the turkey in a metal drum? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACBZsQsx14k

- Building a wood fire and roasting it on a spit? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w18Hu7WD2qg

- Using a grill? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIRQ3iTIH4U

- Doing it the redneck way by making your own smoker out of leftover popcorn tins? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oet33UJnMEs

My ancestors were unacquainted with stylish Eye-talian perfection, but if they had powder and shot to bag the turkey, and wood for a fire, they were good to go. (Hillbillies: jury-rigging their lives since 1607.)

May be stealing your family designs for the Christmas trebuchet the way it’s going, a perfectly stylish eye talian lump of waste metal! Ps I have nothing against Italians just a certain company lol

I hear you!

Thanks foe letting us in on your Christmas "joy" FWR, love reading your stories. Here in Germany the shops would have been Shut. No way of sorting things out at the last minute.

My oven once struck on me when I was expecting a party of 16. Fortunately I had one of those mini ovens in the cellar and it still worked. I did a roast joint of pork and one of beef during the morning, one at a time and served them cold, finishing up with a large salmon trout which just fit in with its tail turned up to cook as the guests arrived. I can't remember now if the hob was still working, but as it was summer I would have been serving everything with a salad, and could have boiled some potatoes for a potato salad on the little camping cooker.

You don't mention the hob. Was that still OK or did you eat your brussels raw?

Could you have cut the turkey in two and roasted half of it in the smaller oven?

I remember when I was a kid one time, my parents bought a huge turkey, frozen. It wouldn't fit in the oven, so my mom made my dad saw it in half with an electric saw while it was still frozen.

I did that with a duck that wouldn't fit in my toaster oven. Bad move on many levels! There was duck grease in it for ages thereafter.