The Night the Oven Element Took the Electrics Down With It

Not quietly. Not politely.

The element blew and like the shady character in a Channel 5 drama making off with the USB stick, it took the electrics with it.

This was serious. We know this because it was enough to trigger Son 2 to emerge from his room which, outside of meal times or the family Wordle, is basically a DEFCON situation only occurrence.

The house was plunged into darkness, it wasn’t actually but it sounds dramatic, but the WiFi went off and that’s bad.

Son 1 who was in charge of our evening meal that night, was already at the fuse box, doing that eldest‑child thing where they act like they’ve trained for this moment their whole life.

“Don’t panic, I’m on it.....we're back on."

Diagnosis: oven element blown.

Meanwhile, pizzas sat in the oven.
Half‑cooked. Half‑warm. Sad.

At this point we could have dumped the pizzas and just done cheese on toast. But no. We were emotionally invested in those sad looking, half-cooked pizzas.

So, once that was decided, then came the family debate:
“In the microwave?”
“Not unless you want pizza with the texture of a face flannel.”

“Pop round to the neighbours?”
“They’re in Scotland, so ….. no”

“Air fryer?”
“Will they fit?”

Cue juggling, angling, and my husband trying to resurrect a physics experiment he’d done in Year 6 a good few years ago. Honestly, the measuring, the angles, the intensity of four people crowded around half cooked pizza.

But, ta-daa! We found a way to make it work.

It crossed my mind that this would make a good round on Bake Off, turn the ovens off mid croquembouche and see how the contestants cope with nothing but a camping stove and a Kenwood Chef to get it finished. Anyway, I digress….Back to the pizza drama.

Because then came the line of the night.
Son 1 looked at me and said: “Mom, you know how you always say things happen for a reason? Well… it’s a good job they didn’t have the 14-inch pizzas and we had to get the smaller ones. We couldn’t have got those in the air fryer.”
I had to laugh. Because he was right.

The thing we’d been annoyed about earlier, the missing 14-inch pizzas, turned out to be the thing that saved dinner.

Was it as good as usual?
We had to eat separately, which none of us were keen on.
But it tasted fine.

Life isn't perfect. Things go wrong. The oven breaks, and suddenly you’re forced into air fryer mode.
You can give up
or you can adjust, improvise, and somehow make it work.

Not a big lesson.
Just a small, messy, very Merrin moment that made me smile.