The gasman rules

Halfway through my darling cooking his breakfast he came out to join me on the balcony with a forlorn look on his face. 'The gas is gone,' he announced, and stared down into his half-way to boiling water. 'I can't cook my egg.'

I walked him back into the kitchen and performed an inspection myself. In my defence this wasn't automatic disbelief, it was based on the memory of our first day here where my darling decided his failure to light the stove was proof positive that it didn't work. It was proof positive of something, but as I managed to have it lit and running a minute later it wasn't of the stove being broken.

But this time it turned out he was correct. I recovered from my shock, and tried to work out what to do.

'I know where the gas tanks are,' he announced, and led me downstairs to the cupboard with the hot water cylinder in it. I let him go back to his half-breakfast (at least the toaster doesn't require gas to cook) while I decided to mount a full inspection of the property.

I've just realised that the title of this blog could be taken the wrong way. Especially if I'm referring to eggs in the first sentence. I'm too lazy to go back and change it now though, this piece is half-written and if I change the title then this whole paragraph will have to go. That means the already-typed-but-then-deleted word count would be added onto the word count for my novel, but I've already spent the time writing it out. Just a moment…

THERE IS NO DOUBLE MEANING IN REFERENCE TO THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG!!!!!

There, that should do the trick. Now readers will refer to the blog title, find the possibility of a double entendre, then their eyes will be drawn to the capital letters above, and they'll be reassured that it doesn't exist. Problem solved, now where were we…

Right. I walked around the entire property. I thought they might be located in the shed next to the garage, but aside from the ventilation fans for the air-conditioning there was only a few lawn chairs. I thought they might be beside the pool, or under the cushion on top of the built in cabinet that was three meters by two metres – solely for the reason that I didn't know what was in it. That lid was heavy. But I proved that they were not located there and that was the main thing.

Next I tried around the side where there was a hose and a short clothing line. There turned out to be a hose, and a short clothing line.

So I wandered back to my starting point and tried again. Shed – no. Pool – no. Clothing line – no. Shed – no. Wait a minute.

There is a large group of trees and bushes next to the fence-line on the right-hand side of the property. For some landscaping-type reason (maybe a drunk landscaper for example) they're grown in stones. Sharp red stones.

I did not have shoes on. I was so confident that they would be located in the obvious place for them to be – the shed – that I hadn't worried about putting on shoes. Or even shoe-like things such as jandals. Bare feet. That's what I had on.

Those stones were sharp. They were sharp when I stepped on them. They were sharp when I stood in confused silence on them. They were sharp when I finally figured out the complicated structure of the gas tanks and that in order to get gas flowing again I needed to turn a switch so it was pointing at the second tank and walked back to the driveway.

But at least I was victorious!

I returned to the kitchen and tested the stove. There was the lovely sweet smell of gas, the lovely buzz of it emerging from the burners, and the lovely woomph as the flame caught hold.

The gasman rules.