Do you like your bacon crispy?

One of the things that's been great about living with a boy is that my boyfriend can cook. And more than that, he likes cooking and actually wants to do it. I'm more than happy to let him, seeing as I'm seriously lacking any ability in the cooking department.

So on Saturday when he said that he'd get the breakfast sorted I was happy to let him. He got the bacon under the grill and I sat down in front of the telly, waiting for my lovely breakfast.

He came and sat down next to me. "I just checked on it, it's not even vaguely done, it'll be a bit longer."

So a couple of minutes later he got up and went back in to the kitchen.

And the smoke alarms went off.

That's right. Plural. We have 3. 1 in the kitchen, 1 just inside the front door and 1 in the lounge. And all of them were blaring.

I automatically went to switch it off, except that I forgot one teeny tiny problem. We live in an old converted house and the ceilings are about 12 foot high. Unless I employed my go go gadget arms I wasn't going to be able to reach it. I went in to the kitchen to try and reach that one but that one was slightly too high as well. Didn't matter anyway, because it's a rented property, the smoke alarms are tamper proof, you can't turn them off, just just have to ride it out.

I thought I was going to go mad, they were so bloody loud and there was nowhere you could go to get away from the ear piercing shriek that was making me want to pull my hair out and grind my teeth.

Finally there was silence. Either that or I'd gone deaf.

"I hate over-sensitive smoke alarms" I said as I walked in to the kitchen.

It wasn't over sensitive.

What was lying on the grill pan did not in any way shape or form resemble bacon. Instead there was a blackened lump that sort of had a slightly reddish tinge to it in places. I've never seen anything as badly burnt as that mess.

My boyfriend looked disconsolate. I don't think he's ever burned anything, let alone toally incinerated something. Trouble is, he's been living with an aga for a while and I don't think he's used to your bog standard electric oven where, and this was the key mistake, you have to keep the oven door open when you're grilling.

As I scraped the mess in to the bin and lit some candles to try and get rid of the charred meat smell that was pervading the flat, I looked at him. I couldn't say anything, he was so disappointed. "I'll make it better" I said to myself and I sat him down and said that I would make him some breakfast.

He got Marmite on toast.