Kevin Page: Nothing much beats lovin' your oven

By household decree, domestics do take priority over the fun weekend activities.

Last Sunday while regular people were enjoying regular weekend activities we cleaned our oven.

I say "we" in the loosest sense of the word. Ninety-five per cent of the onerous task was undertaken by Mrs P while I was generally just called in for the heavy lifting and difficult to get to parts.

"Heavy lifting?" I hear you say. "On an oven clean?" Let me explain this was not your normal run of the mill oven cleaning. Regular cleaning has had to suffice until now. This was THE big clean.

Nasa spends a similar amount of time and effort on its space missions. Of course I should have known it was going to happen. But I didn't see the signs when I awoke on Saturday morning and lay there pondering the possibilities for the next two days.

Coffee with friends, maybe a nice stroll in the Redwoods, dinner out all crossed my mind before Mrs P decreed there was work to be done. To start with a certain piece of machinery needed to be employed on a certain green area surrounding the house.

This needed to be done before we could even consider any of the other activities, she said.

For a moment I considered trotting out the old "I'm keeping the grass long to stop the weeds getting in," excuse but figured it had probably run out of credibility by now so before you know it there I am mowing the lawn.

And Mrs P is helping. By removing the odd piece of dog poo before the mower sends it spinning over the fence and splattering on the neighbour's brickwork. To assist in her endeavours she goes to the shed, my shed, to get a shovel. And she doesn't return.

After a while I go to find her and discover she has given up on the poo removal and is now "tidying" my shed. (I know guys. Take it slow. Deep breaths.)

Now as any man knows sheds are sacred. It has been that way for millions of years.

When archaeologists found the remains of ancient man they found a little area at the back of the cave with a half used tin of paint, some random lengths of wood and diagrams hewn into the rock which look remarkably like the All Blacks defensive patterns.

This was obviously the very first shed. Women were punished for getting too close.

Nearby was a pile of bones. Scientists are still trying to work out whether they are female bones or whether the caveman had gorged on a bit of K-fry before the ice age hit.

Anyway.

So Mrs P has tidied my shed. And as I stand there in shock, hoping none of my mates come round to prove her claim right and see if they actually could now eat off the floor, she's gone inside. She has the (cleaning) bit between her teeth.

The oven is in her sights.

By the time I've got inside (it takes a while to reorganise a pristine shed so it looks a bit more "manlike" if you get my drift) the oven is in bits.

That's to say the moveable bits have been, well, moved and Mrs P is scanning the accompanying manual for cleaning advice.

I am enlisted to remove the heavy door before Mrs P clambers inside the oven with all manner of cleaning utensils and tools.

For the next couple of hours there is a fair amount of banging and clanging, interspersed with the familiar sound of moisture being wrung out of cleaning material. All this time I am on standby in case any more heavy lifting is required or Mrs P requires coffee or a foot massage.

At one stage I am sent to get a screwdriver and asked to remove something she cannot reach. In such cases I find it is best to lay on one's back, trying to look like you know what you are doing.

When queried as to why you have adopted such an odd position you say "I can get better purchase on it this way."

This basically means you can work on the offending item better but the mention of the word "purchase" generally wins you brownie points because they think it's something to do with shopping.

So, hours later we're done.

The door has been completely pulled apart to get to the glass which has then been cleaned and the door reassembled. Every visible screw and bracket has been checked and wiped.

Every crumb or minuscule morsel that ever dared to land on the bottom of our oven has been removed. I challenge CSI with their special lights to find any evidence of a past culinary indiscretion.

Luckily we still had time to engage in some of those more pleasing weekend activities and we went off out to dinner.

Unfortunately we had to go out the night after too.

Mrs P cleaned the oven so thoroughly a bit fell off and now we've got a small hole in the back and we can't use it.

Kevin Page has been a journalist for 34 years. He hasn't made enough money to retire after writing about serious topics for years so he's giving humour a shot instead.