Let me PLUG that up there, love. It’s perfectly standaAAARGH!

Burn baby burn, kitchen inferno

Fuses? Eh?

You have to agree, other homeowners – in fact, other people in general – are plain weird. I heard one story from a woman who bought a house and found, under the stairs, that the previous owner had been collecting dead spiders in a paper bag. But that’s another story.

Last week, a simple process of replacing a gas hob in my aforementioned kitchen has developed into an epic tale of love and war, spanning generations and featuring a cast of thousands. The electrician can’t touch the gas. The gas man can’t touch the electricity. The hob installer can’t touch either. United can’t touch City. Fat men can’t touch their toes. MC Hammer can’t touch this.

Can't Touch This – MC Hammer

And so it goes on. While I am resorting to frying onions in the microwave, one workman after another has entered my house to take turns in slapping their foreheads at what they have found behind the skirting board.

It turns out the previous owner of my house must have had trouble finding a spare electrical socket to power the ignition button on the exiting hob (you know, the clicky thing that never works, forcing you to open all the windows and use a match anyway). So he spliced the cable into the raw mains.

Who needs fuses, anyway? No doubt the breaker would have kicked in before I had completely combusted, leaving nothing but a pair of slippers and a pile of dust in front of the cooker, Fortean Times-style.

It’s all about interfacing between inadequate systems that weren’t installed at the same time, nor adequately planned for.

All you can do, then, is make the best job you can at the time with limited resources but a willingness to get it done quickly, in any way you can, so you can move on to deal with the next crisis.

The besuited bullshitter with his 3D kitchen designs has long buggered off. Some poor sod of an underpaid kitchen installer has to make it work.

And so it is with IT systems rollouts. Aside from death by electrocution while boiling pasta, can I really blame anyone for that? ®

Alistair Dabbs is a freelance technology tart, juggling IT journalism, editorial training and digital publishing. He has left the future owners of his house a little botch job of his own, after being forced several years ago to replace at short notice a broken light switch plate in the living room. The room has only two lights but he could only find a four-switch plate at the DIY shop. So now he has four switches for two lights, and he can’t be arsed to change it. Let them work that out when he’s gone: it’ll drive them crazy.