Thunder in the kitchen

This is nothing to do with herds of overweight cooks running through, nor a disoriented Leo Sayer.

Finally managed to get the parts to fix the Rayburn : looks like a cooking range that supplies heat to the house + hot water. It's a pressure jet burner, and when the flame is on there is a distinct rumbling noise in the background.

It's a comforting sound to me as I lay in bed on a winters morning. It tells me that the house will be OK when I get up and that there's enough hot water for a shower.

It's not been the most reliable of heating appliances though. Many is the morning I've laid in bed, listening to the sound of the burner, hearing it splutter and then catch again, or even worse, wondering if I heard it splutter and then playing the sound back again and again in my semi-awake state to identify what I really did hear.

Maybe I'll bite the bullet in another year or 2 and replace the burner unit. I've spent about £100 on parts in the last 12 months: a new burner was about £600 last autumn. I guess it's done 10 years for us, so I shouldn't complain. Just somehow it's never seemed reliable, and usually breaks down in the Christmas holidays in a way beyond all natural odds. God graciously letting it keep going until I'm around to sirt it or just gently throwing me a little challenge when I've time to cope? Or maybe it just simply doesn't like Christmas?