Nearly burned down the house. Well, not quite. Smelled burning and thought it was outside (one of our neighbours are too tight to pay for bins, so routinely, and illegally, burn their rubbish, and my window was open, so it was a reasonable assumption, if wrong) and then realised my alarm had gone off for dinner. Went down to check on it and as I descended the stairs I realised the smell was getting stronger.
Oh ****!
Walked into a kitchen full of smoke. Looked at the oven, nothing wrong there. But here's what had happened: when I turned off the cooker at the socket this morning, I had forgotten to turn off the ring on the hob. As a consequence, when the switch was thrown again, to start the oven, the ring came back on. I did not notice this. Nor did I notice that the frying pan, while not on the ring, did have its handle pointing towards and over it. This was then what was burning when I came down. The plastic handle of the pan was in danger of melting.
Luckily I managed to come down early enough to avoid any real trouble, and in fairness I doubt any fire would have resulted: the pan was, after all, not on the ring. But then, I don't know: the hotter the handle got, maybe convection would have made the pan itself heat up, and though there was little oil in it, maybe it could have ignited, I don't know. All I know is that I had to open the doors and turn on the extractor fan to try to get rid of the smoke, and now I need a new frying pan and the whole house smells of burnt plastic.
I swear, the first one to say "Out of the frying pan, into the fire" ....
Scary stuff. Doesn't help that I'm an idiot.
__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
|