My basis for this postulation being the tentative one of Candy being unable to do either whilst claiming to be able to do one? I’m afraid there aren’t any prizes for guessing which. As you may have already concluded, I am in possession of a Candy fridge/freezer. The freezer part of this equipment claims to be frost free; if this is in fact the case then why is it that every molecule of water that has gone missing from the Greenland ice sheet in recent years has found a new home in the back of this misnamed piece of junk? This ‘frost free’ freezer needs defrosting at least every three months unless you fancy spending at least half a day sitting on your arse giving the glacier at the back of the freezer compartment the hairdryer treatment. A quick note to the Candy design department, don’t believe your colleagues in the marketing department when they tell you that the product is going to be frost free, it isn’t, so build in a drainage channel.

However, this is not my biggest beef with this piece of, this piece of…….what’s the word I’m searching for here? Lets go with ‘equipment’ for the time being, something more apposite may occur to me later. No, irritating thought it is that it doesn’t do what is says on the box, it only needs to be defrosted every three months, my biggest gripe is demonstrated every day when I try to remove the milk from the door shelf. The unadjustable door shelf. Now we are fairly eclectic shoppers when it comes to milk, Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Morrison, we’ve had ‘em all, 2 pints, 4 pints, 6 pints. Now the plastic used for the containers is thin and somewhat brittle, as the fridge does manage to cool things a little, so as you are forced to deform the container to get it out from the shelf it will on occasions crack. This does not please me. All that is required is for the distance between the shelves to be about 2cm bigger. Have all purveyors of milk suddenly started making their containers bigger just to make Candy look bad? Or could it be that Candy couldn’t be arsed to research the size used and design accordingly?

I know that there are bigger issues in the world today but they are not in my kitchen, this piece of junk is.

All I can say is; it wasn’t my fault, I was doing nothing more subversive than indulging in the normal domestic routine, went to see the good lady, about something which escapes me now, and noted that she was watching one of these frocks/make over things on the box. I never, ever watch these things, the whole genre is a complete load of foetid dingo’s kidneys in my, admittedly not so humble, opinion. But thing poked me uncomfortably in both the eye and ear. Why this petite middle aged woman put herself up to be carted around by, and subjected to the sort of excoriating criticism usually only on offer from your very best friends from a substantially upholstered black women and stick insect white lass I cannot begin to imagine. Intellectually I knew it was not going to happen, but emotionally I hoped that it was all going to resolve itself when petite middle aged woman draws herself up to her full 5’2” and tells the pair of them to fuck right off out of her life. Did it happen? I don’t know, I had to vacate the vicinity of all TVs to avoid the possibility of them being ejected through the nearest window.

Maybe this is the programmer’s game plan, the tantalising possibility that someone will cowboy up and tell these parasites to take their smug superiority and shove it, but if it happens once then what is the need to watch the remainder of the series, if it doesn’t how can you put yourself through the disappointment again?

How does this puerile, tawdry crap make it past anyone with even the most tenuous grip on the purse strings of the programming budget? Answers, in magic marker on a white, chiffon creation from Dorothy Perkins (no larger than size 8), to Sir Michael Grade.

I like digital cameras. I have one myself and have used it quite a lot and I am one of the users that the purveyors of printed media hate. I take photos, download them to my PC and that’s where they stay. I have the capacity to print them on my photo printer and show them to friends and family, but I forgo this pleasure unless I really, really want them to go, right now. Your coat? I have it right here and after that I usually get showered with gravel as the father-in-law handbrakes it out of the drive.

No, my problem with digital cameras is with the padding it’s use inflicts on something which may have some merit. I drive HGVs for what passes as a living and my employer invited me to take an NVQ in Road Transport Driving or some such and I dutifully toddled off to the induction. Sounded OK at the start but the people running the course didn’t offer a lot of substance and then they trotted out some portfolios of previous candidates. These things were between 1½ - 2 inches thick! Well OK, it’s a demanding job but these folios are full to busting point of the most banal of photos and a few tick sheets. Photos of the wheel nuts, the lorry being driven on the day, with and without the bonnet up, the driver, the load, the fork lift that loaded it, the plate detailing the spec of the vehicle, the oil filler cap etc. ad nauseum. Anything, everything! Now if they want to photograph this crap, go right ahead but put it at the back and reference it from the main body of work so that we can all get at the substance of what is on offer.

This would not have happened in the day of print photography due to cost and someone having to fix the photos to the page and organise the layout. There may have been one or two photos that would give emphasis to some aspect of the job but they were deluged in this instance by the pox of worthless imagery present for it’s own sake. Hey look at this, I’ve got a digital camera!! Yeah, great, keep banging the rocks together sparky.

Not posted much recently, so guess I must have been faily chilled in recent times. A number of things have changed that, some of more import than others.

I got myself a 6 Gb MP3 player and so I have not had to listen to quite so much infinitely recycled news as previously, however the furore surrounding General Sir Richard Dannatt has infiltrated my consciousness. Let me make my position abundantly clear from the outset; Sir Richard, er…shut up. I have heard many people espousing the qualities Sir Richard manifests as a human being and Chief of the General Staff, I don’t know him and have no reason to disbelieve any of what I have heard. But here’s the rub about the position he currently holds, I’m sure it was in the job description somewhere, Chief of the General Staff is not a platform for him to comment publicly on Government policy or the social fabric of this country. His beliefs and options are of no concern to me, nor is the content of his comments, right, wrong, insightful or utterly barking, he has an absolute right to hold these views. If he wishes to bestow upon us all the benefit of his wisdom, then he should resign and seek a platform the same as any of us have the right to do. In the meantime he should strive to fulfil his remit to give voice to any concerns the army may have through existing and confidential channels. I confess my ignorance of the nature of these channels but I am quite sure they do not involve the media. He might not like the fact that Government is carried out in part by the politicos via the various organs of Mr R Murdoch but the only phrase I can offer is ‘tough’ that’s a one way street and that one way is quite bad enough. Another thing which I confess my ignorance of is the exact nature of the relationship between P.M. and Chief of the General Staff, but I assume that Blair was in a position to break him off at the ankles and stayed his hand. If this is due to Blair believing that he now has Dannatt by the short and curlies whilst he remains in post then we are all losers as the Army’s voice at the big table has been reduced to a whisper and their legitimate concerns will not receive the credence they deserve. This is the result of the breaking of centuries of precedent. How are those few column inches looking now Sir Richard?

Now to more trivial issues. I have filled most of the MP3 player with podcasts. They’re great, but not perfect. I have no great issues with the content or the quality of presentation but could something be done about sound levelling please?! I’m not talking about taking feeds from phone interviews, other radio stations, Skype conversations but when two people are in the same studio, why can I hear one and find the other almost completely inaudible? More than that, when there is only ever once voice in the podcast it can go from eardrum perforating to a whisper! C’mon guys sharpen up your act a little!!

Now a little bit on what I have gleaned from some of these podcasts; most of what I listen to is about science and technology and I’m a little concerned by what I hear. I comment on the basis that the research that I have heard reported is, in part at least, publicly funded. I don’t recall where the items I’m about to recount originate but somewhere in the world funds are being allocated to this research which, I contend, could be better placed elsewhere. It has been confirmed, you’d all been waiting for this don’t try and deny it, that ants count their steps when outside the nest to help stop them getting lost. How was this verified? Stilts and partial dismemberment. Some ants had their stride length shortened by removing part of each leg and others had stilts attached to lengthen their stride. I kid thee not. The long striders when past the nest, stopped and looked for the entrance to the nest, the amputees stopped short of the nest and started looking.

Experiments have also been carried out on fruit flies to establish which part of their brain is used to process or store colour images. That these results increase the sum of human knowledge is undoubtedly true but let me offer the Dr’s Strangelove who undertook these experiments three little letters and a punctuation mark; H ? Y W. Rearrange in to a word that may not currently be present in their vocabulary.

In the slightly bigger picture I learn that String Theory is still being kicked around. Now this is a theory which I feel confident in saying has had millions of pounds, dollars, yen, euros etc. chucked at it for the past 20 years and even one of it’s major proponents admits that it still predicts no experimental results. Isn’t it time to get off the gravy train and put this one on the shelf until some of the other competing theories have been given an airing?