When you’ve got no money it’s infuriating how many things that should “just work” just don’t. Like our cooker. As you may remember, we refitted our kitchen in the couple of months before we got married and bought a new cooker as part of that refit.

It was a carefully-thought-through compromise between what we could afford and what we’d have liked in an ideal world. We applied the “David Alstead” rule of buying the best thing we could, with the budget available and as a result of this careful deliberation we bought a mid-price Hotpoint dual fuel cooker. I switched to a gas hob about ten years ago now and wouldn’t ever willingly go back to electric. Gas just works so much better. Electric hobs are right for some people but not for me any more.

The decision turned out to be deeply flawed. The cooker is only four years old and is now effectively useless. The front panels where the dials and knobs are housed has been turning to dust because it's rusting away before our very eyes and has been for a year or more. This doesn’t really affect the cooker’s performance but it looks terrible and doesn’t exactly scream “Hotpoint are good quality” at us. Then one of the rings on the hob stopped firing. Again, I can cope – a box of matches will get it going but nonetheless, given our already dented confidence in the Hotpoint, it’s not exactly a good endorsement of their quality either.

Last week, I put something in the oven and was alarmed to smell burning and, after about an hour, the dish I was cooking still wasn’t properly done. I tried again the next day – the burning smell got stronger and the oven completely failed to heat up. As we don’t have a microwave, the cooker is our only method of cooking and the lack of an oven is a major problem.

We’ve investigated getting the oven fixed but the cost is huge and given the general dilapidated-ness of the cooker, it seems to be throwing good money after bad. We’ve looked at buying a new one but cooker prices have rocketed since we bought that one and a comparable cooker is now roughly 70% higher in price than what we spent on that one four years ago. So, it’s back to jolly old ebay again then. But even this is a problem. Partly because of the dual fuel, which are quite hard to find, and partly due to the “collect in person” only nature of items like cookers when you live in one of the most inaccessible places in the country. Everywhere is a long way away and a four hundred mile round trip to collect a cooker adds another £80 to the auction price. Hmmmmm.

What do we do? We compromise in a different way and buy an all-electric cooker from ebay. I am gutted that my days of cooking on gas are now limited to another few days until I can clinch a deal for a replacement. Not only that but we don’t have gas here so we paid someone to install a bottled gas system especially for the cooker. Pah. Talk about disgusted. My strong advice to anyone out there considering buying a Hotpoint cooker is simple – don’t do it.