New cooker

For the record.

The lower oven, the one with the fan, in our eleven year old Zanussi ZCV66000WA cooker, gave up in the middle of baking apples, intended for our lunch yesterday. We thought that the likely cause was loss of heating, which is supposed to be supplied by two elements mounted inside the side panels. We thought that we had lost one of these elements before, with part and installation costing of the order of £150.

I blamed the wear and tear on the elements caused by regular baking of bread, which requires the fairly high temperature of 225°C.

First problem was to find the model number of the cooker, with which to communicate with cooker people. It was not printed on the outside or anything like that, but after a while we found a ticket inside the door to the upper oven, snapped above. Much easier to read on the telephone than with the naked eye.

Second problem was to find the paperwork. Again, after a while, BH ran it down. Not that it told us a great deal.

Third problem was whether to mend - which we thought might cost around £250 - or to replace. And as far as I could see on my telephone replacing like-for-like was no longer an option, although there seemed to be plenty of second hand ones knocking around on eBay and elsewhere - the snap above being taken from an auction house, rather than our house.

The decision was to pay a visit to the branch of euronics up at Tattenham Corner, people with whom we have done entirely satisfactory business in the past. It not very many minutes we had bought a 'AEG CCX6530ACM Free Standing D/Oven with Ceramic Hob', not identical but very close to the Zanussi. Plus installation and removal of the Zanussi. All very neat and tidy.

The only downside was an oven clock which we neither needed or wanted. But at least we have hand operated knobs which go round and round.

A little later, I got back home with a Comet, picked up from town. Carrying a half page advertisement for the very shop we had just used.

We also learned that the long running 'Jolly Boatman' saga, noticed in the pages from time to time, usually in the margins of a visit to Hampton Court Palace, was still running. The developers say that all the delays have damaged the arithmetic and that they need to cut provision of car parking spaces. The residents say tough. The saga has been running for 40 years now, a showcase for all that is wrong with the way we manage urban redevelopment. Apart from anything else, it is a lot of asset which has not been making any money - or anything else - apart from being an eyesore that is - for a very long time.

A little later still, I thought to make inquiries of Gemini about the whereabouts of Zanussi. I now know that both AEG and Zanussi are Electrolux brands, with Zanussi having lost out in a bout of brand rationalisation. Electrolux itself is Swedish, which I did not know either.

PS 1: it looks as if we made similarly short work of buying the Zanussi in the first place. For which see reference 3. Its subsequent repair is noticed at reference 4, a bit more than four years ago. It turns out that I did find out about Electrolux at that point, but had forgotten. Wouldn't even think of attempting installation of a 2,500W heating element now!

With Gemini's subsequent response to my supplementary being snapped above. For Udinese Calcio, see reference 5: it looks as if they are playing Rome tomorrow. Needless to say, Gemini can tell me all about that too:

'... When Lamberto Mazza took over Udinese in 1981, his ambition was to turn the modest provincial club from Friuli into a European powerhouse, effectively backed by Zanussi's balance sheet. The climax of that gamble came in the summer of 1983, when Mazza stunned world football by signing Brazilian superstar Zico for billions of lire....'

PS 2: on another subject, I have been taking an interest in a supposed Oriental Arborvitae up on Meadway. I was quite surprised to find this morning that, from a distance, it had turned quite brown. Much more brown than it appears in the snap above.

Presumably some sort of aftershock of the drought - having already noticed that some of our deciduous trees showed the first signs of trouble some weeks after the heat and the drought broke.

PS 3: and on yet another, the JDT vacuum excavator was blocking our road this morning. Presumably, having packed up and moved on, they have had to come back to address some problem or omission. Which must be expensive for them.

References

Reference 1: https://www.euronics.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.electrolux.se/.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/08/zanussi-or-bust.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=oven+element.

Reference 5: https://www.udinese.it/.

Reference 6: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/10/more-platycladus.html. Oriental Arborvitae.