Sunray House, Tricity Avenue, Utopia

Dear Madge - How do I like my new house? Its a dream! I was terrified when I heard it was all electric, and I simply trembled at the look of the stove, but my dear, it’s just too marvellous! When I think what I suffered from that old kitchen range, it seems too good to be true.

 Of course , you will tell me that gas is a good, but what use would gas be to a person like me who isialways losing things? I should never be able to find the matches! Now I give one flick and there you are! As for electricity benign slower than gas, as I keep being told by th old fogies, it isn’t - if you use your brains. The hot plates take longer to heat, of course, but that only means that you switch on before you get teh pan and the lard and the morning rasher. By the time they are ready, so is the stove, all hot and glowing, and once it is really going, you can switch to low, or even off, and finish it.

 All this “residual heat” business, as the experts call it., takes some getting used to, but once you understand it it is amazing to find that you can stew fruit or bake custard in the oven when the dinner comes out and you have switched off.

 But the important thing my dear, is the absence of dirt. How I loathed scouring sooty saucepans, and the mess my clothes were in unless I boiled and boiled/ Now I can dump a hot saucepan anywhere without leaving a mark, the stove only needs a flick with a soapy cloth, and the washing up is nothing. I am saving pounds on soaps and cleaning powder, and the new cloths I treated myself to when we moved keep clean for days. As for me!! With an oven at sensible height, no roaring fire to scorch my face, and no soot to ruin my hands, I feel twenty years younger.

 Do come over soon and see me -and the Tricity.

  Yours in clover,

DOT

8, Baker Street, Local.