Nothing ever wears out, part two

And so when we moved back to Leeds our new house on the new estate, built by the same builders who built TV's "Brookside" estate, and co-incidently looking exactly like TV's "Brookside" estate, was severely lacking in the gas cooker department.

Fortunately we knew someone who had just purchased a new gas cooker and wanted to dispose of their old one - with one proviso.

Their old gas cooker had been condemned by the Gas Board as being (and I think these are the engineers exact words) "a bloody death trap" and the person who was disposing of the gas cooker made me promise faithfully that we would never use the oven part because the fault on it meant that if the oven was lit and you opened the door then you would be instantly incinerated by a huge flare of gas - we agreed never to use the oven bit, which was fine as we didn't know how to cook.

Our dad was delighted for us that we had sourced a free cooker, it was the sort of thing that he coveted, stuff for free, it made his day.

Six months later we were ready to buy a brand new cooker and dispose of the "bloody death trap", the new cooker was delivered and installed and the old one dropped unceremoniously out the back ready for me to take it to the rubbish dump.

I went to work and mentioned that I needed to borrow the van to take the old cooker to the rubbish dump.

My dad went crackers.

He told me in no uncertain terms to take the cooker to the bloke up Harehills and sell it to him, I told him the story of how it was "a bloody death trap" and that we couldn't sell it for this very reason, he insisted that the fact that it would kill the next person who used it was nothing to do with me and that I would get "good money" from the bloke at Harehills.

He wouldn't give me the van keys, it was against his principles to allow me to dispose of something that he could get "good money" for, it was a sin that I should want to throw something away that was worth "good money", even though it wasn't worth tuppence to anyone who cared for their own life.

We had a huge row which ended with him storming out of the office with the van keys, driving to our house, loading the cooker into the van on his own (a 70 year old with a cooker on his back) and taking it to Harehills to flog to the junk man there.

He walked back into the office with a big smile on his face and a ten pound note to wave in my face.

Make do and Mend.

Even if it kills the next person to use it.