Then there are the four ovens. Alen knew what he was talking about when he expressed the desire to meet the needs of a busy home. No one needs more than four ovens of course, unless they are running a restaurant.
The top right hand oven is for roasting and baking. Sizeable, it can accommodate anything up to a 13kg turkey. There is a further oven designed exclusively for baking alone on the bottom right hand side of the Aga.
What's really useful for those who like making casseroles, for instance, is the simmering oven, which can be found on the top left hand side of the unit. Your casseroles can literally be left overnight in this oven. It can also be used for the slow cooking of vegetables, handy while you concentrate on other cooking tasks.
The neatest trick can be found on the bottom left hand side of the Aga, where the fourth oven is located. This is the warming oven, and its function is simply that, keeping food warm without any risk of drying out. An incredibly useful kitchen function (think about Christmas dinner).
But the ovens are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an Aga. Once you spend a few days playing with one, you realise that it has many more uses. Obviously, having more ovens helps, but the manufacturer's claim that you can effectively throw away a number of your old appliances because the Aga can take their place is actually quite valid.
You don't need a toaster, because the Aga has one. Not only that, the toast that it produces is actually better than that which your old standard toaster can provide. Toasted sandwiches can be made also. All the toast that comes out of the Aga can be tweaked just how you like it.
Grilling is easy too. The roasting oven serves up perfectly grilled steaks for example. Bacon, sausages, any other meat you might throw on a charcoal grill, comes out crispy and succulent after a few minutes in the Aga.
And that's not all; any time spent with an Aga owner soon brings forth a multitude of tips and tricks that can be performed with the appliance. Agas have been used to revive a loaf of stale bread, to clean wax from candlesticks, to loosen tight lids from preserve jars, and so on. People have even ironed clothes on them.
There are smaller models than the four oven, going all the way down to a two-oven model, but one can't help feeling that the four oven owners look down on the twos, because it's about the cost as well. If you are going to buy an Aga buy a four oven, they're secretly saying, because buying a four oven Aga places you in a distinct earnings bracket. Picking up a renovated four-oven model could cost you around £5,000. Then it will need installing, which could cost around £500. Not cheap. If they need servicing or further renovating or reconditioning you're back in the thousands of pounds market for most respectable service firms.
My friend inherited hers when she bought her cottage. It was, of course, one of the reasons why she bought the place. The value of a house has been known to increase when an estate agent discovers an Aga in a property, they sell houses like gardens and bathrooms do.
And Agas make their owners happy, very happy. When my friend has a particularly down day I have a new technique I can use to lift her mood. But you have an Aga, I say, bringing into her world the kind of happiness that no amount of pills or therapy will ever manage.
