Joanne McNeill: Our stove springs back to life

Spring forward, fall back - daylight savings is here again.

At last spring forward, fall back - the mnemonic for remembering which way to turn the clocks for daylight saving - has stuck.

Clocks were synchronised successfully with official time (except for those in the car, the cellphone and the laptop, which are far trickier to manipulate than the watches, and the ones on the stove and in the shiny plastic Japanese fake rosewood mantel cabinet).

Then, after the brief biannual biorhythm time-warp, the return of daylight saving settled into lovely long balmy evenings to spend in the garden, when working light has faded, micro-weeding treasures in the front row of the mixed border, spying on the thrush sitting on a nest in the tangelo tree, or on the outdoor maintenance projects - de-scungeing the deck, rebuilding the shed wall blown out in last week's equinoctial gales - which might otherwise gobble working hours. To everything there is a season.

This year, however, daylight saving brought an unexpected bonus - or if not strictly a bonus, at least a return to treading water - albeit with embarrassing aspects. To recap: our last stove (a re-conditioned, second-hand el cheapo) gave its final gasp (flames, smoke, popping, liberal applications of salt to the seat of the fire) during a dinner party. Dinner was saved and the guests were oblivious but the oven never revived.

Then we bought the very first brand new stove of our lives. Its first Christmas - 2006 - was a triumph of glazed ham and trimmings for a big family gathering.

Then the stove-top elements started malfunctioning. To this day, whether they heat up or not is a lucky dip and, if they do, they only function at full blast no matter how the thermostat switches are set, dictating a whole new style of cooking which requires full-time vigilance.

By then, the company which sold us the appliance had closed down so there was no chance of replacement under guarantee - even had we been inclined to take on the hassle - and no money for another.

So when the oven stopped working around last autumn, we cursed, assumed another defect, and stoically adapted until the happy day - thought to be imminent before Christmas ages ago but, mirage-like, the closer it seems, the further away it gets - when my family's condemned, quake-damaged Christchurch home, is finally rebuilt.

The latest hold-up is Christchurch City Council building consents, which apparently take 60 days, but no one says when the 60 days started. What has this to do with ovens?

Apparently when the Chch house is demolished, everything has to go, including a perfectly good stove, which seems a waste, so it's earmarked for freighting this way, come the day.

Meanwhile, however, miraculously, here, upon the act of winding our stove clock forward for daylight saving last Sunday, the dormant oven sprang back into life.

Clearly, when falling back last autumn, idiotically we must have triggered the clock's automatic oven timer (which, shamefully, we never figured out how to use), inadvertently turning the oven off for the entire winter.

Hallelujah though. All hail the return of the light ... and the oven in time for Christmas dinner.