"Actually, they’re vegan. And Leo doesn’t drink"

A FRIEND arrives in the kitchen, bearing a plate covered in tin foil. “Scones,” she says, “just out of the oven but they might need a bit more cooking.”

“Good luck with that,” I say.

“Or maybe I could just warm them,” she says hopefully.

I look at my oven; the very thought of its warming anything is chilling.

“Is it still not working for you?” she says, glancing at our cooker with the same sanguine look that we used to direct at it in the month following its purchase four years ago, when we still had a shred of hope that we might not just have spent €350 on a thoroughly reliable agent of ruin and woe.

“Occasionally,” I say, staring at it with the same bitter look that we have been directing at it ever since.

I take up deep-squatting position in front of it.

“If I contort myself like this,” I demonstrate, trying to twist my neck to a place necks can’t go, “and stretch my arm up like that, so that I can find that button — yes the one right up there, just out of reach — and hold it down while I put this matchbox between my teeth and light a match with my free hand, sometimes then I can luck out.”

“Oh,” she says.

“‘Crouch, Pause, Engage,’ Dave calls it.”

We eat the scones cold.

“And the thermostat’s gone now as well,” I continue, “so there’s only one setting: Blacken. And only two of the gas-rings work. Do you want to come to dinner on Tuesday?”

“We’ve got visitors from London coming on Monday,” she says, glancing nervously across the kitchen at the oven. “You’ve met them before. Remember Leo?”

“Bring him too,” I say.

“He’s coming with his girlfriend, so...”

“Bring her too.”

“Are you sure?” she says.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“If it’s not too much hassle...”

“Of course it’s not too much hassle,” I say, “I remember Leo. He was fun. We can have a nice low-key meal. Just so long as they don’t expect any devils-on-horseback malarkey. There won’t be any of that, not on two gas-rings there won’t.”

“I’ll tell them,” she says, “you’ll like his girlfriend, she’s lovely.”

“Good,” I say, “and they’re not vegetarian or anything ghastly like that?”

“Actually, they’re vegan,” she says, looking stricken, as well she might, “and now I come to think of it, Leo doesn’t drink.”

I eat my scone, unable to think of a mannerly way in which to recant.

“We’re cooking for two vegans on Tuesday,” I tell my husband when he returns from the gym after work.

He looks at our two gas rings, then at me.

“Vegans?” he says.

“Yes, vegans,” I say, “I think we need to aim low.”

He sighs; I can’t quite work out whether the source of his despair is the oven, the vegans, me, or all three.

He stares balefully at the oven. “Vegans,” he repeats, with the kind of incredulity you’d expect from a man who regards food-expiration dates in the same way that he regards UFO’s, ghosts, and other cockeyed phenomena.

“We’re cooking for vegans on that?”

“Unless you’ve brought back a fan-assisted oven from the gym.”

“I’ve only been gone six hours and in that time you’ve managed to find two vegans,” he says, looking balefully at me. “Where did you find them and what do they eat?”

“No eggs, meat, fish, or dairy.”

“Honestly,” he says, sounding like his mother, “what does that leave?”

“Greens,” I say.

He walks over to the kettle and stares out of the window.

“Plenty of green out there,” he mutters, pointing at the field.

“I said ‘aim low,’ not put them out to pasture,” I say. “Also, Leo doesn’t drink.”

“Grass and rainwater it is,” he says.