Battleaxe domestic dramas – oven cleaning, computers…

Let’s get this straight from the start, I’m no domestic goddess (concept now discredited. It puzzles me why that Nigella just didn’t lamp the old bully with a cast-iron skillet.). Anyway, if there was a Slut of the Year competition, I’d be among the entrants.
     We have lived in this house for exactly one year.  Part of the refurbishment exercise before we moved in was a new kitchen from Magnet, with new oven. Needless to say, I have not cleaned the oven for a year. The other day, Philosopher commented that the eye-watering fumes in the kitchen were getting perhaps a little oppressive…
     The oven has some high-tech pyroclastic, pyrotechnic in-built cleaning mechanism, so I thought I’d give it a go. The thing heated itself up to a million degrees and roared away for one and a half hours, sounding like the Vulcan bomber (of which, as with the Red Arrows at last year’s Pirate Day, we had an excellent view as it flew past our house). Lights dimmed all over the South East, the decommissioned nuclear reactor at Dungeness was reactivated to give one last boost to the flagging grid – but at the end of the time, oh miracles, a clean, as new, oven, with thick black gunge replaced with a dainty little heap of white ash. Philosopher cleaned all the racks etc., and wow – what a sight!

Was that Battleaxe’s oven roaring? No, it was the Vulcan bomber flying past the house..

     Apart from standing staring at the oven, I have been very busy. The new Hastings Writers’ Group website is almost ready to go live. Local web designer Nick Weekes has done the basic design, but I have been putting in loads of the content. Photographer and HWG member John Cole has provided images, as has the Philosopher, and indeed, me.
     Lots of writing : two of my posts have been published on Hastings On-line Times (HOT), the Byzantium piece, and the Garden Centre Review.  In this week’s Hastings and St Leonard’s Observer, two out of the four published ‘Club News’ pieces are by me also – the HWG and Hastings Ore WI write-ups.  Will soon have a stranglehold on all local media….
     Have also been working hard on the new HWG ‘Animal Writes’ Anthology.
     Talking of the Philosopher, he has been having a terrible time with his computer. His old one died, and he got a new one with Windows 8. Well, say no more. The thing is a nightmare. In Birmingham we had this fantastic guy who came to the house, called Marish. A Hastings equivalent has been recommended to us, and he has been out to visit, but computer persons are like hairdressers and dentists. Building up a relationship with a new one is intensely anxiety-provoking. However, this guy (selfishly, am not publishing his name in case he gets so busy he would never have time to come out to us again), seems fine so far.
     I will shortly do a Bombastic blog about the current Microsoft travesty. My computer is at least four years old, and still runs Windows XP and Office 2003. It is a bit slow now, but does what I want without complaint. I am dreading replacing it, but the time must come….. Suffice it to say that Microsoft seems to have no interest whatsoever in pleasing its customers, it just removes perfectly good stuff which works well, and replaces with stuff that does not.
     What else?  Am helping with the up-coming WI Bazaar on 6 July, on the bric-a-brac stall. Have got loads of stuff from neighbours etc., and am now pricing it all up. We are also supplying an ex-Retro Bizarre rail for the vintage clothes. Philosopher said this morning that his life seems to have been spent wrestling with clothes rails – not quite, I say, only about the last fifteen years…

Hurrah – new beach cafe….

     To change the subject completely, we went for a walk to St Leonard’s today, and what did we find on the sea-front by Warrior Square? A new beach cafe, in part of the toilet block. Battleaxe has being saying for ages that more sea-view cafes are needed, and now, one has appeared.