How to find and photograph the model number of your hob

 

We have a broken part on a Neff hob. 

What is the part called? The saucepan support. 

I took a photo of it to send to Craig on the Neff chatbox.

He said he needed to know how old the hob was. About twenty years old. 

And what was the model number?

No idea.

The website advises that the number is on the underside. A photo shows the hob with the front raised. 

I told the patient and sympathetic customer services person that I could not lift the hob and was afraid or dislodging wires or pipes.

I sent him a photo of the broken part, above.

He was unable to find the part. He said he had to hunt through lots of catalogues. A pity he did not have them online. He might have been able to do a picture match.

I looked at the picture of the place of the number. Where was it? At the front - or the back. Could you actually see it, from underneath, if you were a contortionist, or was sight of it blocked by a shelf supporting the hob and protecting the electrics or gas pipe?

I found what i thought was a raised section near the front. But how to see it?

I looked around a spotted a magnifying mirror. I tried holding that under the hob, but no luck. What I saw was distorted and dark.

So I called my husband, Trevor. 'Trevor - do you have a torch?'

He said, No, but you have a torch on your mobile phone.

Torch In Phone

You go into settings. Find the symbol for torch. Switch it on. When you have finished, you tap the symbol again to turn off the torch.

Yes, the words and number were there. How to take a photo in the dark? Use flash!

After that, you can expand the picture on the phone. And email it to yourself and then forward it to the appliance maker's spare parts department, or hunt online for a spare parts supplier. i found them on ebay, amazon, and comparison sites.

I pulled out the drawer below the hob and felt.

Make a record of your hob number and email it to yourself. Write it in a book, or on a page of vital information about your property.

At the end of the year, review and recall and remind yourself of all dates. We bought this house in such and such a year. We replaced the car in this year. He bought the oven in that year. We bought from this shop. From that manufacturer. The guarantee and instruction book are in this colour, with this label on this shelf in this room in this property.

Useful websites

ebay

amazon

Neff

What's Making Holes In My Lawn?

Squirrels on lawn in London, England. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Dig this! I wrote on Facebook that I would take a picture of a squirrel. The squirrel picture which I promised is here! 

Not only that, I have solved another problem. What was making holes in my lawn. I was editing my photos and found my attempt to photograph a squirrel, the culprit responsible for holes in my lawn. 

Normally I would have deleted this picture because when the subject is blown up large the picture is out of focus. That is not clear to the reader and does not reflect well on me as a professional photographer of in focus pictures, carefully cropped to tell a story, usually about travel and tourist sights.

However, I cannot re-take the photo and it is interesting evidence of criminal damage by the squirrel! Let's analyse this incriminating photo, like detectives.

On the left is an innocent by-stander, the bird. This bird is not a useful witness - busy with his own breakfast, annoyed at being wrongly accused, saw nothing. 

The bird was listed in our list of suspects as a wood pigeon. It was later identified from feathered outfit with white ring around the neck as a collared dove. 

This picture is cropped with the squirrel culprit in the middle, the two other characters forming a triangle. On the right is another squirrel which is leaping, racing towards its quarry, the central criminal squirrel obliviously burying its loot.

Afterwards, I saw the squirrels chasing each other, fighting, escaping, fighting, racing off, engaging again, quite a fracas! Only when I looked at this photo did I realise what the fuss, the fight was all about. One squirrel is burying its food. The second is trying to grab the food. 

The squirrel on the right is not police in my pay protecting the lawn. Alas no. The second squirrel is even worse, a squirrel mugger! That's why I have so many holes in my lawn.

Known Noises

Secondly, I have now identified the source of so much mysterious noise from unidentified flying objects. Thumps land on the creaking fence and bang on the roof, day and night. 

By daylight I see four or more magpies, looking so smart, black and white like men in dinner suits, but seen as thieves by smaller birds. The magpies, like the squirrel, are also taking food away from weaker creatures (small birds and soft hearted gardeners like me). 

Magpies are constantly pacing the conservatory roof. Next comes a loud, banging of hard fruit with their beaks, attempting to crack open unripe nuts, fruit, figs.

A high pitch sound at night might be cats caterwauling. 

At night Casanova foxes pursue and catch vociferous, screeching, lady foxes of the night.  Once I heard such a lot of shrieking outside in the dark street that I nearly called the police. next day I asked my neighbour. She said it is foxes mating. She has them breeding at the far end of her garden. 

Now I have identified another noise as scampering squirrels, scattering and pattering, fighting for food. It's a wild world out there.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, atuhor and speaker. Author of How to Get Out of The Mess You're In. I give talks on this subject covering finding your glasses, getting organised