I was congratulating myself on having gained access to the sanctuary of our apartment without a single such incident when I heard the faint hiss. Had we left the CD or the TV on all day, and why was I beginning to get a headache?

I can only imagine what might have occurred if I happened to be a smoker. The first thing I would probably do on arriving home is light a cigarette. If this were my habit, then I'd be writing this while perched on a cloud - I'd left the gas stove turned on all day.

As I staggered to the stovetop and turned off the burner, I pictured the scene. "Ahhh," I would have thought as I pushed open the door with a smouldering filter tip dangling from my lips. "The end of another day of toil. I do believe I've earned an ice-cold can of beer ... " Kaboom! The blast would have sent me hurtling through the glass wall at the far end of the living room, my charred remains being found on the playing fields of the nearby school, right arm still reaching for that elusive beverage.

Head spinning and knees buckling, I made it to the sliding doors leading to the balcony, rolled them back and reeled out into the fresh air. As I gasped for breath, I realised that I had added an entirely new act to my repertoire of life-threatening habits. For never before had I left the gas turned on. It could only have happened when I'd made coffee that morning.

Here's a tip. If you are going to make coffee on a stovetop espresso maker, make sure you screw the base on properly. Failure to do this will cause half-brewed coffee to bubble all over the stove, which is what had happened that morning. Panicking, I'd grabbed the coffee pot and put it in the sink, having learned the hard way that putting it on the bench burns a brown circle in the white surface. Then I'd tried to unscrew the bottom off the pot and burnt my hand. Shrieking with pain and shock, I then dropped the bit that contains the coffee grounds on the floor. This covered the white tiled kitchen floor with a steaming, brown paste - not a good thing to happen when you are already running late for work.

In the course of these chaotic few moments, I can only presume that I somehow managed to extinguish the gas flame, perhaps when I'd flapped around the kitchen like a demented pelican after burning my hand. The flame had gone out but the gas had remained on.

If I was to make a habit of doing this, my fiancée and I would have to emulate coalminers and carry a caged canary with us, dangling it through the door every evening before we entered. If it fell off its perch, we could safely presume I'd left the gas on again.

I was reminded of that time I'd tried to roast a chicken. At one point I opened the oven door to check on its progress. Somehow in doing this, I caused it to fall out of the baking tray, down the back of the oven and land on the gas jets. There was an explosion and the chook and I ended up on the other side of the kitchen, both in rather poor shape.

On this night we had planned to cook a steak but settled for takeaway instead, not having the courage to light the stove in case there remained a pocket of gas which would ignite and leave us trapped in the remains of our apartment without the benefit of a steel cage.