The theory and practice of selling the Aga cooker (1935) [pdf]
(comeadwithus.wordpress.com)22 points by phpnode 3 days ago
22 points by phpnode 3 days ago
In the early 90s a friend bought a five or six chamber Aga. He had lived in a house in Europe that had had one and he loved it. It cost a fortune to acquire and to install as the house had to be structurally reinforced to accommodate the weight of the oven. I remember that it took at least a couple of days to come up to a stable temperature across the whole oven. Each of the cooking chambers had a different temperature.
I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.
It would have been more ridiculous had his wife left him for one of the burly men fitting the unit in place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_saga
a subgenre of the family saga genre of literature ... typically interpreted to refer to "a tale of illicit rumpy-pumpy in the countryside" ... it offers a "gingham-checked world" associated with "thatched English villages" and "ladies in floral dresses".> ...that is always on
with predictable results w.r.t. quality-of-living when your house already has central heating.
Agas used to be a very rural middle-class thing: it was how I imagine most countryside homes' heating and cooking worked, and it scaled from a modestly-sized cosy cottage to being in expansive stately homes. But postwar, and especially since the 1960s, Agas are just a status-symbol appliance to me.
Like, in North America, you know you've made it when you have a Wolf range and a Subzero fridge in your kitchen. In the UK, it's when you've got an Aga.
...probably because the only comfortable way to run the thing is by also having central air-conditioning installed and running full-blast while you use the thing.
Semi-related, but they aren’t the status symbol they used to be. I know a guy who did quite well out of removing Agas for a few years because they are so expensive to run. Apparently up to 20x the cost of more sensible equipment. They were sold for scrap metal value because people weren’t buying them any more. He charged them to remove it and got paid scrap value.
The worst one I heard was someone who paid £10k for their top end Aga, found it was costing £700 a month to run and it was scrap in under a year.
Dead technology.
I'm really fascinated by this use of the apostrophe, where it seems to function similar to a colon or emdash:
> Find out all you can about your prospects before you call on them' their general living conditions, wealth, profession, hobbies, friends and so on
(another example)
>Tell the person who opens the door frankly and briefly what you have come for' it will get her on your side
Edit: also find this spelling of Nobel prize interesting:
> he has actually won the Nobel Prices
I had to go lookup what it was, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGA_cooker Apparently it’s a stove/range that is always on.