Our cooker stopped working a couple of weeks ago so we have had to manage without it. We have been limited to things we can cook using an electric wok and a George Foreman grill. We sometimes cheated and bought things like the Uncle Ben's microwaveable rice. Pasta was cooked in a pan but using water from the kettle. The boiling water was poured over the pasta, the lid was put on the pan and we waiting for it to cook. The pasta was sometimes a bit firm but at least there was little chance of it overcooking.

The oven was finally delivered this morning. The old oven was removed and the gas supply was tested for leaks. They detected a pressure drop, so the installer phoned Transco to report a leak then left, saying they couldn't do anything until the leak was fixed. It was company policy apparently.

An hour or so later, an engineer arrived and repeated the test and confirmed a leak. He said that leaks within a house weren't his responsibility but said he would do a quick test to locate the leak while he was here.

It turned out that the leak was coming from the end of the gas pipe, where the old cooker had been attached. The valve was leaking. He capped the pipe to stop the leak.

So much time could have been saved if the original installers had checked the valve when they removed the old cooker. If the valve only started leaking after the cooker was removed then the installer should have noticed this. The Transco man didn't understand why they didn't test it using a bit of soapy water.

To make matters worse, when I phoned back to say the gas leak was fixed, I was told they couldn't come back to finish the installation until friday. Another %$@&ing week without a cooker. If the original installers had tested the valve, rather than just %$@&ing off, then we'd have a working cooker by now.