Lord of the Aga Rings

Aga cookers get hot very gradually. There’s no hurrying an Aga. They are the plodding dinosaurs of the cookery universe. Jurassic and basic. Functional in an unhurried world of their own. But you can still burn the food if not careful. That’s plenty pent up and uncontrollable heat for you.

I am the Master of the Aga. Bow down. I can shuffle the pots. It’s a form of dance fused with the management of sources of intense heat and burning metal. You could lose your fingerprints or fingertips. It’s very dangerous but when it works out for you it’s satisfying in an abstract and ancient way. However the naan bread that became a biscuit was less successful.

As children we burned many books and things, mostly sausages and some books, some Ladybird books. Currently I am burning logs. Logs harvested by the great wind of the winter of 2022 that flattened Edzell Woods and many others. Now we burn their tree bones. There’s nothing else to do with the piles of timber debris. I don’t know what environmentalists might make of this action. When nature fights back the rules change and the logs are harvested.

Logs, secure in their resting place awaiting cremation.