I really think Instagram is trying to make me fat.
Unlike apparently half the population, I don’t follow celebrities, fitness influencers or people who photograph themselves standing in front of expensive cars or worse still those annoying people with the fake nails that insist on tapping on things. My Instagram feed consists almost entirely of bakers, bookshops and people who live in beautiful cottages with enormous kitchen tables.
Consequently, every time I open the app, I’m confronted with freshly baked Lemon Drizzle, enormous Chelsea buns, beautifully iced cakes and books arranged beside steaming mugs of tea all with the obligatory candle(or candles) burning away in the background.
The trouble is, after approximately five minutes of scrolling, I develop an overwhelming desire to abandon everything I’m supposed to be doing, you know, boring things like work and the like, shut the front door, put on an apron and spend the rest of the day baking. Preferably in a kitchen with a large wooden table, a vase of freshly picked flowers and a rather charming view of the countryside.
In reality, my kitchen table is covered in things that need sorting out, there’s probably something crusty and burnt in the oven that needs cleaning off and I’ve just discovered we’re almost out of butter. Still, this doesn’t stop me imagining myself producing magnificent cakes and rustic loaves whilst the rest of the world carries on without me.
Then there’s the book side of things. Apparently, one cannot eat a homemade Treacle Tart without simultaneously reading a lovely book, preferably beside a window with rain gently trickling down the glass.
I can see the appeal. I really can.
In fact, I’ve reached the conclusion that if I spent as much time actually baking and reading as I do looking at other people baking and reading, I’d be considerably happier. Although probably three stone heavier and with a serious cholesterol issue.
I really need to put my phone down.
Just as soon as I’ve found the recipe for that gloriously sticky looking Sticky Toffee Pudding.
I’ve got three eggs, half a packet of butter and some apples that need using.
What I’d like is a cake recipe. Nothing particularly ambitious. Something I can put in the oven before the apples grow legs and walk off. I search online and find a promising picture and click.
Apparently, this cake reminds the author of a little cottage in the countryside. That’s lovely, but I’m in the kitchen wondering how much flour I need. The recipe author is now explaining that autumn is her favourite time of year. Mine is rapidly passing while I look for the oven temperature inamongst all the blurb.
I do understand that somebody has put time, effort and money into creating this recipe and I’m grateful they’ve shared it, and I don’t expect them to do all that for nothing. I’m happy for there to be the odd advert, I’d just prefer them not to move or float into the bit I’m reading.
Eventually, I spot “Jump to recipe”.
What a fab idea. We could perhaps have started with that. I press it and arrive at the ingredients, which briefly remain still before an advert loads and shifts everything down. I was looking at 175 grams of something or was that a cup. Bloody hell now I’ve got to convert American cups into grams – where’s the calculator when I need it?
Oh Yay! Another advert. I’m looking at a woman who wants to know whether I’m paying too much for broadband. Almost certainly love, but you’ve caught me at a bad time.
Once I’ve found the flour again, I begin. This is when the practical difficulties of reading a recipe from a phone become apparent. My hands are buttery, the screen keeps going dark and I’m trying to scroll with the only clean bit of my little finger. I wipe my hands, put my glasses back on and try again.
What I miss is being able to put a recipe in front of me and trust it to stay there. A book has its faults, particularly when it insists on closing itself, but a bag of sugar will generally settle that argument.
I don’t mind a story with a recipe, either. If I’m sitting down with a cup of tea, I might enjoy reading about how it came about. When I’ve already greased the tin, I’m rather less interested in the afternoon your aunt first made it.
For now though, I’ve copied the ingredients onto the back of an envelope. The writing gets a bit cramped, but I can read it, and nothing has moved for several minutes. I’ve made cakes before I think to myself. Lets just pop everything into a bowl, give a good mix, pour it in the tin and see what happens.
The apples are finally in a cake and I find myself thinking a recipe book is so much less faff.
The other day, the printer ran out of yellow, which I wouldn’t have thought mattered very much because I was trying to print a letter. Just black writing on white paper. I wasn’t planning to include a sunflower.
Before you all say it, yes, I selected “Black and white” on the printer option things. Apparently, yellow still needed to be there for some reason.
I took the cartridge out and put it back in, because that occasionally works with things. There was some encouraging whirring, then the same message asking me to replace it. I’m sure there’s probably a perfectly sound technical explanation, but standing in the spare room discussing colours with a printer, I couldn’t think of one. The other option running through my head was to launch said printer out of the window, but that really wouldn’t solve much.
Eventually I gave in and ordered a replacement, checking the number several times because all the cartridges look much the same and I didn’t want to spend twenty quid on the wrong little plastic box. Unfortunately, I needed to post the letter that day, so I emailed it to my ever so patient friend and drove three miles to collect it from her house. I remembered an envelope so I could post it on the way home, which felt quite organised under the circumstances. Hurrah! Mission accomplished, letter in post.
Two days later, the yellow cartridge arrived. I popped it in and the printer promptly produced several copies of the letter. Presumably it had remembered every time I’d pressed “Print” and was now keen to show willing.
All beautifully printed in black, with not a trace of yellow anywhere.
I have a little book of passwords. An actual book, made of paper, with all my passwords written in it in biro.
In an age when we’re constantly being warned about cyber security, identity theft and the dangers of writing passwords down, I have entrusted practically my entire existence to a small notebook that lives amongst the cookbooks in the kitchen.
It’s a highly sophisticated security arrangement. Nobody would think to look for my online banking details between Mary Berry, Jamie Oliver and a tattered old copy of Delia Smith Christmas. To be fair to them, they’re doing a grand job guarding my passwords.
The book started off innocently enough. A few passwords for things I used regularly. Online banking, emails, that sort of thing. Then along came the children’s school dinner payment portal, the electricity supplier, the insurance company, the supermarket, the dentist and approximately forty-seven other organisations, all of whom insist I create an account before they’ll allow me to do anything.
Every single one has different password requirements. One wants eight characters. Another wants twelve. One insists on a capital letter, a number and a special character. Another won’t accept the special character I’ve chosen, presumably because an exclamation mark is considered a threat to national security.
Then there’s the business of changing them. So I more often than not find myself pressing the ‘forgot password’ button. Apparently, I can’t use a password I’ve used before. I can’t use anything remotely memorable, and I certainly can’t use the same password for two different things.
So I invent something completely ridiculous, immediately forget it, and rather embarrasingly have to go through the whole ‘Forgotten your password?’ procedure again.
Occasionally I’m asked to confirm my identity by answering a security question I apparently set up in 2014. What was the name of my first pet? Was it the cat? The goldfish? Did I use its proper name or the ridiculous nickname we called it?
At this point I generally give up and go to make a cup of tea and reach for the custard creams.
Which brings me back nicely to my little book. It’s not particularly attractive. The pages are covered in crossings-out, arrows and occasional question marks where I’m no longer entirely sure whether a password is current or one of the previous six.
Some entries have ‘NEW’ written beside them, although quite what I considered new in 2019 is anybody’s guess. And don’t even get me started on the post it notes written in some sort of weird code that I thought was very clever at the time.
Of course, I realise there are clever password managers that will remember everything for me. I’ve looked into them. They require setting up an account, installing something and creating a master password. If I’m honest I don’t entirely trust them, all that techy stuff and clever hacker people might hack my password manager thingy
One single password upon which all the other passwords depend. Crumbs. I know I’ll forget that one too and then where will I be.
I stick to my little book thanks. It’s in the safe hands of Delia, Mary and Jamie.
I bought some scissors the other day because ours had disappeared. I’d looked in the drawer where we keep them, asked whether anybody had seen them and received the usual assurances that nobody had touched them. Wherever they’d gone, they’d apparently travelled independently. Maybe it was the Sock Monster trying to diversify.
Anyway, I bought another pair. They looked sturdy, had comfortable handles and seemed perfectly suitable for the fairly modest cutting requirements of our household. Unfortunately, getting them out of the packet turned out to require the equipment I’d specifically gone shopping for.
You’ll know the packaging I mean. Clear plastic, sealed all the way round, with no obvious way in. I think it’s called blister pack but not 100% sure on that. ANyway, I turned it over several times, looking for a tab or some instructions, but all I could find was a picture showing how nicely the scissors would fit in my hand once I’d been allowed to have them.
I tried pulling the top apart, then bent a corner until it went white. Getting a fingernail underneath achieved very little beyond hurting my finger and a sharp jab of pesky plastic going up under my fingernail causing me to swear quite a bit. So I stood there for a moment looking at the scissors through the plastic and cursing the people who thought blister pack was the perfect scissor packaging solution.
I do wonder whether anyone tries opening these things before they send them off to the shops. Presumably the person packing them has scissors readily available and hasn’t considered that some of us are buying replacements.
For a while, I considered using a kitchen knife, although I could already imagine having to explain that to somebody at A&E. “I was trying to open some scissors” would need a bit of context before they wrote it down on their sheets. Nevertheless, I gave the packaging a good stab and poke with my favourite kitchen knife. (Yes, I know it sounds particularly pathetic to have a ‘favourite kitchen knife’, but if, like me, you do a fair bit of cooking, you’ll understand my favourite knife situation.)
Eventually, after rummaging further into the drawer, I found an old pair we’d stopped using because they barely cut anything and the hinge bit had gone all loose and wonky. I’d evidently kept them in case we ever needed to give a piece of paper a raggedy edge. They did, however, get under a corner of the packet, and with a fair amount of effort I managed to cut my way round. The plastic became much sharper than anything I’d intended to buy, so getting the scissors out involved handling the remains quite carefully. I’d gone to all this trouble and was rather keen to finish with the same number of fingers.
Once released, the new scissors were excellent. I tried them on a bit of paper and they cut beautifully, which made it all the more annoying that they’d been sitting there perfectly capable of helping with this task had they not been held prisoner in the blister pack.
I’ve put them in the drawer now and asked everyone to leave them there. I’ll place good money on them disappearing wihtin a week.
No i didn’t take a picture of scissors in the shop – this is AI. Also not an advert for Westcott scissors, i don’t even know who they are.
Now I’m clearly missing something. Surely my aim with screenwash is to see through the windscreen. I’m not trying to lick it.
I was in B&M the other day because I needed a tub of AdBlue and some screenwash for the car. I admit I did inadvertently buy the bubblegum screenwash, mostly because it was the only option. I just grabbed the jug and off I went to the checkout.
It was then that I read the label. “Screenwash.” Good, that’s what I want. “Made in Britain.” Bonus points for the economy. “Bubblegum scent.” I did a double take.
Bubblegum scent? In screenwash?
Somewhere along the way, removing a dead fly from a piece of glass became an opportunity to introduce a confectionery fragrance.
I thought screenwash had a fairly straightforward job. Get the muck off, help the wipers along and, provided you’ve bought the appropriate stuff, avoid freezing when it gets cold. I wasn’t aware that the smell was an area crying out for improvement. Certainly not an improvement involving bubblegum. Do people go around smelling car windscreens? Is that a thing? Have I been walking past them all these years missing out?
Who wanted this? Was someone driving along, giving the windscreen a squirt and thinking, “Visibility’s much better, admittedly, but the experience lacks a certain pick ’n’ mix quality”?
Perhaps people simply like the smell. Fair enough. I like plenty of things that aren’t strictly necessary. It’s the discovery of yet another thing we can now have a fragrance preference about that makes me want to sit down and have a gin and tonic.
Buying screenwash really should to be one of those small, unremarkable jobs you can complete without consulting your personality. You need some, you buy some, you put it in the car. Now there’s a moment in the process when you find yourself considering whether bubblegum is what you want from your windscreen.
I’d rather save my decision-making capacity for something that matters, such as what’s for tea or whether that noise the car’s making is going to be expensive and can I ignore it for another month.
There’s also something peculiar about making a car-cleaning liquid smell of sweets. I don’t open the bonnet hoping to recreate the atmosphere of a childhood birthday party. Usually I’m just hoping I’ve identified the right cap and won’t have to get the handbook out.
Nobody’s forcing me to buy it, of course, although in this instance I already had. It does leave me wondering what goes on in product development meetings. I hope nobody spent an entire afternoon sat in a boardroom somwhere discussing how to shift more screenwash before someone finally said, “You know what this needs? Bubblegum.”
I’d have been quite happy with just a clear windscreen.
Car screenwash container. Yes it’s AI generated – I am not taking a pic of a screenwash thing
I’ve chosen the self-checkout because I’ve only got a few things. This is an important part of the story. At the beginning, I believe I’m saving time. There’s a staffed till open, but someone has a reasonably full trolley and I don’t want to wait behind them so I think the self serve option will be quicker. Fairly logical, I can scan my own shopping I’ve managed it before. How difficult can it be?
I do as instructed on the screen. I put my bag down in the bagging area.
“Unexpected item in the bagging area.”
Oh Lordy. We haven’t even started scanning the shopping yet.
I remove the bag. The machine asks me to put my bag in the bagging area. I put it back, slightly differently, in case its objection was to the angle. I need a member of staff. I look around with that ‘help! I can’t work the machine!’ look on my face.
A lovely woman comes over, scans her badge and presses something. Whatever I’ve done has been forgiven by the machine, although neither of us is quite sure what it was.
I scan the milk. That goes well. Encouraged, I scan the bread and put it in the bag.
“Please place the item in the bagging area.”
Pretty sure I just did. So I lift it out and put it back, because perhaps the machine wasn’t looking the first time.
“Please wait for assistance.”
The lovey (and now very patient with me woman) returns. I give her the apologetic smile people develop when they’re repeatedly asking someone to come and witness their groceries. She presses a button. The machine is happy once again. Yay!
I now scan the wine. Now, this interruption I was expecting. Someone needs to check I’m old enough to buy it. Fair enough. I do think my face and greying hair provides fairly compelling evidence, but I appreciate that the machine can’t simply take one look and say, “Christ, yes. Let her have the wine”
The woman comes back. At this stage I’m pretty sure I saw the ‘eye roll of despair’ flash across her face but she’s too well trained and polite to show it so I can’t be sure. That said I now feel that we’re getting to know each other quite well but I can’t help think that if I’d gone to the human till in the first place, I’d have probably finished and paid by now. Instead, the lovely woman is supervising my work in instalments.
She approves the wine and goes to help someone whose machine is flashing red. There are several flashing red now. From a distance, I think the whole area must look quite Christmassy. I carry on determined to get out of the shop with my few bits. Something won’t scan. I flatten the packet, find the barcode and pass it over the reader again. Then again, more slowly, because evidently I was rushing it or not doing it quite right.
Nothing.
So I change the angle. I smooth a crease. I’m now presenting a packet of cheese from every conceivable direction, like a proud parent trying to get a baby to look at the camera. Eventually, it beeps twice. Bugger. I’ve bought two cheeses. But I only have one cheese. I need the woman, again.
By this point, I’m keeping an eye on where she is before attempting anything ambitious. She’s helping a man who has put something down without permission. Behind her, another customer is holding a bag in mid-air, afraid to make the next move. I understand their position entirely. When she reaches me, I explain about the cheese.
“It’s gone through twice.”
She removes one. I thank her with rather more feeling than the transaction warrants. This time I definitely got the eye roll. I know I did.
Anyway, I’m thinking that there are three items left. I’m so close now that I begin to feel hopeful, which is a silly mistake. One is very light – it’s a birthday card, and the scales refuse to accept that anything has happened. So I put it down more firmly and with some flourish this time in the hope that the weight will be recognised.
Apparently, it still doesn’t exist. I’m tempted to lean on the bagging area to lend it some substance, but I suspect this would create further questions. Across the aisle, the person with the full trolley is paying at the staffed till. Of course they are.
Anyway, eventually, everything has been scanned, weighed, approved or personally vouched for. I press “Pay” with the relief of someone reaching the end of a moderately difficult exam. The machine asks whether I have a loyalty card. Yes, yes I do. Somewhere. I find it in amongst all the other loyalty cards I have shoved in my purse which I’ve been meaning to sort out. I find it and scan it.
I pay, collect my shopping and check that I haven’t left anything behind. The woman is already dealing with another red light. I want to tell her she’s been marvellous. She has, after all, helped me buy a loaf of bread, some milk, wine and one cheese. It’s been a joint effort really.
The machine thanks me for shopping. You’re welcome. I’m pretty sure I qualify for the staff discount for my work here.
Of course this is AI – who opens a bottle of wine on their way home from the shops.
Do I honk that much that I need the Postman to bring me deodorant every two months? I don’t think I do but then again you never know. As the saying goes ‘a fox never smells it’s own hole.’
Before I dig myself any deeper…. I can understand running out of deodorant being inconvenient and maybe involve a last minute dash Boots or Superdrug in your lunch hour. What I’m less convinced about is that it requires an ongoing contractual relationship.
Somewhere along the way, buying a deodorant became something you could subscribe to. You choose your scent, arrange your deliveries and presumably get on with your life, secure in the knowledge that someone is keeping an eye on the armpit situation. There’s probably even an email welcoming you aboard and you can join the ‘deodorant chat community.’ Oh Whoppee!
I can see the practical appeal. If you’ve found one you like, use it regularly and appreciate having it delivered, fair enough. Refillable packaging can be a sensible idea, too. A sturdy case you keep and refills you replace sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Plus less plastic or aerosol cans floating about the place, that’s got to be a win win.
It’s the leap from “this needs replacing occasionally” to “let’s establish a recurring payment” that makes me question this supposed ‘convenience.’
My previous system which worked for decades involved noticing the deodorant was getting low and putting it on the shopping list. Or better still finding that said deodorant was on special offer when I walked down the Toiletries aisle at the supermarket and thinking ‘happy days. Two for one. I’ll grab a couple and shove them in a cupboard.’ Admittedly, this system has its weaknesses. Sometimes I forget to write it down. Sometimes I write it down and leave the list on the kitchen table, where it does an excellent job of supervising the post. And sometimes I just plain forget. Even so, I’m not sure the situation had deteriorated enough to require an account and a password.
The trouble is that deodorant isn’t being offered to us in isolation. Quite a lot of businesses would now like a small, regular claim on our bank accounts or credit cards. Each one sounds manageable when you consider it separately. It’s only a few pounds. You use it anyway. You can cancel whenever you like. Before long, you need a quiet afternoon to establish who’s sending what, when it’s coming and whether you still want it.
There’s something rather impressive about turning the purchase of a basic toiletry into an administrative responsibility. I used to own a deodorant. Now I could potentially have deodorant settings I never even knew I needed.
Perhaps I’m supposed to adjust the delivery frequency until it matches my personal rate of use. This is where I begin to feel that rather more thought is being devoted to my underarms than I’d intended. I don’t know how long a deodorant lasts me. Until it’s finished, generally. I hadn’t been keeping records and I don’t intend to.
A regular delivery can be useful when you get through something at a predictable pace. When you don’t, there’s the possibility of a small stockpile developing. You open the bathroom cupboard one morning and discover you’re prepared for considerably more perspiration than you have planned.
You can skip a delivery, of course. Provided you remember before it arrives and most of the time you’ve got to read the email to remind yourself of that too.
That’s the bit I find myself questioning. A service sold on the basis that I won’t have to remember something can introduce a different thing to remember. Instead of “buy deodorant”, it becomes “check whether I need the deodorant I’ve already arranged to buy”. Maybe it’s just me, but the convenience of the subscription also uses my brain power to do the admin. And frankly I can’t be arsed with that.
For now, I’ll stick with the old fashioned shopping list. It’s on the kitchen table if anyone needs it inamongst all the bills, local pizza delivery service flyers and the pamphlets from Iceland and FarmFresh Foods that come in the post.
Deodorant-arama. Yes it’s an AI generated image – do you honestly think I’m going to take a photo of a deodorant on a shelf.
I’ve been looking at it while the kettle boils, trying to imagine what might be at the other end. More information about the biscuits, presumably, although the packet has already told me what’s in them, who made them and how many I can eat before I have to start being dishonest with myself and hiding the evidence before the kids come home.
I’m not sure what else I need to know.
They’re biscuits. I know what to do. Nobody has ever handed me a custard cream and watched me turn it over in bewilderment, hoping there might be a short instructional video. Yet here we are, I’m being invited to take our relationship with the packet online.
Perhaps there’s a competition. That would at least explain it. I can understand being asked to do something for the chance to win a holiday, although I’d prefer it if buying the biscuits counted as sufficient effort on my part. I’ve supported the business. I’m getting crumbs on my jumper. Surely that ought to put me in the draw.
What I find harder to understand is the assumption that I want to become more involved. This seems to happen with almost everything I buy now. Somewhere between standing in Morrison’s or Tesco, choosing a product and putting the packaging in the recycling, I’m invited to join a community. It’s very kind, but I already have people to talk to. Some of them are in WhatsApp groups, where they’re currently taking seventy-three messages to decide whether half past six would suit everyone.
I’m not sure I have room for the biscuit people as well.
There might be recipes behind the code. I appreciate the thought, although my main biscuit recipe involves opening the packet carefully enough that I can fold the end over afterwards and shove it back in the cupboard so it doesn’t look like the packet has been opened. On an ambitious day or if I’m feeling posh, I might put them on a plate.
Of course, nobody is making me scan it. I can leave the code alone and get on with my tea, which is what I generally do. There are useful reasons for QR codes, too. If I’m trying to put something together I’ve bought from Ikea and a diagram will stop me attaching the legs upside down, I’ll happily point my phone at it. It’s the sheer number of invitations that gets me. Every ordinary little purchase seems to offer further reading, a survey or an opportunity to tell someone how I felt about it. I’m beginning to think that buying the thing is merely the introductory stage. The real work starts when you get it home.
Sometimes I don’t have feedback. Sometimes it was a perfectly satisfactory biscuit and I’d like us both to be allowed to move on.
There’s something lovely about a cup of tea precisely because so little is required. You sit down for a few minutes, perhaps with someone whose company you enjoy, perhaps in the blessed absence of anyone asking you anything. The phone can stay where you left it or in my case, lost it.
That’s where mine is staying this morning. The kettle’s boiled, and I’ve already spent longer thinking about the packet than the manufacturer could reasonably have hoped.
If there’s something wonderful behind that little square, I shall have to miss it.
The custard creams are very good from this side. Yum.
