What can possibly go wrong?

Friends coming over for dinner this evening, what could be nicer? Not cooking anything special, just a standard English Sunday roast. Decided that instead of just 'gravy' to accompany the meat I would make a sauce chasseur, basically that's simply a wine and mushroom sauce. The necessary ingredients are already in the kitchen so it's just a case of 'let's do it'.

First task is to weigh the ingredients for the sauce, simple eh? No, the electronic kitchen scales are dead, do not work, a set of ex-scales. Can't be the batteries are flat as they were only changed a week or so ago. Right, change batteries, first problem - no spare batteries in the house. Raid my wife's little English/French translator for the batteries, put them in the scales and ... the display shows a meaningless load of garbage. Call for assistance from she who knows about these things, whom after much much muttering, incantations and repeated button pressing finally the correct display condescends to appear.

Right, where were we? Oh yes, weighing mushrooms etc, fine, all done. Next open a bottle of wine as some is needed for the sauce. Said bottle of wine opened and is found to be 'off', great for use as vinegar on chips but not much else. Open another, this time as the cork is extracted the bottle slips out of my grasp, dropping to the floor. Tiled kitchen floors are mercilessly unforgiving to anything remotely fragile that drops onto them. Result? One shattered wine bottle, wine and glass fragments all over the floor. There is now an added complication of two inquisitive kittens sniffing the floor, the last thing now needed is drunken kittens or an emergency trip to to the vets to have shards of glass removed from delicate little paws. Kittens shut temporarily in the bedroom and 'Operation Cleanup' can begin.

In England shopping on a Sunday is taken for granted, regrettably not possible here as all shops are closed on Sundays. A quick trot to our neighbours over the road in rain of biblical proportions elicits the loan of a bottle of wine, happily this is safely opened and the requisite amount dispensed into a pan.

Other ingredients are added to said pan and the gas lit. Some thirty seconds later the gas burner goes out - we are out of gas, not having the luxury of mains gas we use bottled. Not a major problem except that to change the cylinder necessitates going outside the house because the bottle is kept in an insulated container below the kitchen window. The rain of biblical proportions has by now intensified to monsoon level as only previously seen in 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum', so having donned wellies and foul weather gear sufficient for a single handed voyage around the globe a sortie to the bottle store is made.

One added luxury is that the roof two storeys above the kitchen window has no guttering so the exchange of the empty cylinder and the spare is made not only in torrential rain but in a waterfall cascading directly from the roof above. Mission accomplished and once more safe indoors, drying off and changing a soggy shirt and jumper, not from a leaking jacket but cold rainwater pouring directly down my neck, it is time to return to the kitchen. The next discovery awaiting me is that recently purchased shallots are all bad under the skin, unfortunately a phone call to our neighbour goes unanswered because they have by now gone out for the day.

So, having phoned a friend who lives several kilometres away and happily has some shallots for the scrounging a further waterproof jacket is donned. Upon reaching our car it is observed that a rear tyre is flat. No, I am not going to change the offending wheel is this downpour as scuba gear is not readily to hand. Returning home amidst a torrent of somewhat picturesque language I am met with an enquiry as to whether anything is wrong. Wrong? Yes there certainly is something wrong - I got up this morning!

Dinner this evening? Ah yes, I'm sorry but you will have to be content with ordinary, standard issue gravy.