Today's thing

No golf today

This morning I broke the glass turntable in the Microwave – or rather it broke itself. I was collecting my porridge from the Microwave and the turntable hurled itself onto the kitchen floor and smashed to smithereens.

It scared the bejesus out of the cats – who at the time were quietly eating their breakfast – and didn’t do much for me either. By the time I had cleared up all the broken glass my porridge had congealed and had to be resuscitated.

I was quite distressed because I simply cannot start a winter’s day without porridge and I could see this daily essential disappearing before my very eyes.

I mean – how can you use a microwave without a turntable. They have this little widget in the middle that turns around – and on which the glass turntable fits and sits quite neatly.

My immediate thoughts were that I must order a new turntable but I knew that – things being the way they are – even with a following wind -  this would not arrive until next Christmas even if I could find a turntable  – and I just knew before looking that the model I have is obsolete – has not been made since 1979 – and that all the spare parts were lost in a warehouse fire in Potsdam in 1986.

So I needed a work-around – and have found a couple. ESB would find 50 but I have a limited capacity for these things.

I can actually balance a plate on the widget and this seems to be reasonably stable although I admit that I can see the dangers. But I have some kitchen implements and paint scrapers that I could use to get the porridge off the inside of the microwave.

 Or I can place a glass jar top over the widget and stand a plate on that. This would mean that the widget would turn underneath the glass top – out of harm’s way. This would also mean that the porridge would not turn when it was cooking so may end up a bit lumpy but it would – after a fashion – still be porridge. 

Having assuaged my immediate fears of being porridge-less I could turn my attention to ordering a new turntable and of course hit the blindingly obvious snag. This is known in the trade as Snag #1. You need the model number.

The microwave is fixed in position somehow and I cannot work out how to get it out to find the model number – knowing anyway that this will be a pointless exercise (see above).

So I had to do what I always do when I am stuck – contact Rozalin. She will arrange for a Siemens man to come and inspect the microwave – order a new part – and charge an extraordinary amount of money for the task.

This will include a call-out fee, a travel fee, a hourly fee and a fee for the bare-faced impertinence of bothering Siemens for something as trivial as a microwave turntable.  

Incidentally I settled down to watch the World Golf Championship in Arizona last night and after an hour it started to snow and play was cancelled. SNOW! Can’t believe it.