We’re home again after a three week trip and I decide to bake some biscuits for a picnic that we will be going on. It’s an easy recipe and I soon toss them in the oven to bake for 15 minutes. Will I have a quick shower? No I might get distracted, how about catching up with the newspaper on the couch? Great idea I tell myself and settle in. After 12 minutes I peer through the oven door and little seems to have happened. They certainly aren’t brown and cracked on top like the recipe says. Oh, well just give them the extra 3 minutes and see what happens. I’m engrossed in the weekend magazine by this stage but a nagging feeling tells me that I can’t smell baking biscuits.

I open the oven and the lack of hot air suddenly reminds me that the oven ‘carked it’ three weeks ago, just before we left home. Damn, damn, damn. Quick as a flash I race out to the yard, turn on the gas and race into the caravan, light the oven and fling the biscuit tray in. I settle back on the unmade bed with the newspapers and wait. It takes twice as long as the recipe quoted because the caravan oven doesn’t seal as well.

Job done, I turn off the gas bottle and return to the house with the baked biscuits. It really is very handy having a miniature house outside!