Top This Arsenic Hour!

If I ever changed the name of my blog, I'd change it to

"I Swear I Am Not Making This Up"

But we'll stick to the fly & the ukulele, in case nothing this noteworthy ever happens again, which, on reflection, wouldn't be all that bad.

I was preparing dinner and needed to preheat the oven. From the early days of our marriage, I have obsessively checked the oven before preheating, as my lovely husband forgot this step once and we lost some cutting boards.

Inside I found a plastic container that Sonny Ma-Jiminy had put in there yesterday. It contained imaginary food for his baby to eat, and it was "keeping warm". I was proud of myself for finding it before preheating the oven!

What I did not find was the plastic spoon that had fallen down under the heating element. I started preheating and then prepared the salmon with its parmesan-crumb coating. When I turned around to put the tray in the oven, when I saw bright orange flames leaping about inside.

What?

I opened the door and thick billows of acrid black smoke mushroomed out. I slammed the door shut again and tried to get Smoochy Girl out of the poisonous smoke and black falling ash that was lightly dusting my kitchen.

The first silly thing I did was to think, "this will be great in the blog." The second silly thing was deciding against taking a photo. Well, getting Smoochy Girl and Sonny Ma-Jiminy out of the smoke was probably my priority, so perhaps it wasn't as silly as I think.

I quizzed Sonny Ma-Jiminy about what could possibly be in the oven. I showed him the container I had saved, and asked if there was anything else in there. He said, "Oh. It's a spoon in there." Mmm, a disposable spoon.

Great. A plastics fire in my oven. Way to go.

A lovely neighbour cooked my fish for me. The house still smelled quite putrid, so I decided to buy some chips from the local fish & chip shop instead of cooking the usual steamed potatoes and beans I do with this dish. We ate it on a picnic rug on the front lawn.

No major harm done, but I need to add the following item to tomorrow's List Of Things To Do:

"Clean out filthy blackened oven."