My built in oven broke, or at least was on its way out. I could turn the knob (yes, it’s that old) to the required setting but there was absolutely no certainty it would switch on.

We did the maths and worked out that it was maybe 15-20 years old. Ho hum. Time for a replacement.

Being middle-class wealthy, we headed to John Lewis after a quick look through the Which Consumer Guide to domestic appliances and chose their BEST BUY, plus the option for them to take away the old oven and fit the new one.

Everything was going really well. They arrived. The old oven was removed and the new one installed. A quick safety check and they could leave.

Oh dear.

Apparently the impedance in my electricity supply to the oven socket was too high at 1.35 (ohms?) So the men uninstalled the oven and left with instructions that I needed to contact a qualified electrician to sort things out. The implication was that my electricity supply was unsafe.

Cheery news – not.

My electrician arrived, checked the oven, saw no problem but agreed that the impedance to the rest of the kitchen was too high and moreover that my very old fuse box could probably do with replacing. he wasn’t ready to say that I needed an entirely new earth system, but possibly?

He is honest as the day is long so having fitted the oven, I’ve scheduled some time for him to replace the fuse box next week. Once that job is done, we can check the impedance again and see if it’s still too high and a new earth is required (different company UK Power Networks) to make my house safe.

A new fuse box will at least have an RCD (Residual Current Device) that will trip quickly if there’s a fault though to be honest, after living with the current one for nearly thirty years and no harm, I’m pretty blasé about the situation.

What was driving me crazy was having a new oven sitting in my kitchen unusable, even though given the heat we’re seeing at the moment I had no desire to bake.

Now that it’s finally connected I have different issues. It’s wifi enabled, talks to my phone and seems to get daily software updates.

Why?