Mrs Malarkey

Tag: modernlife

  • Recipe finder

    Recipe finder

    Somewhere on this Internet page there’s a recipe

    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.

  • My Little Book of Passwords

    By Mrs Malarkey

    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.

    Kitchen counter with “TOP SECRET BOOK OF PASSWORDS” beside cookbooks and a mug
    Of course this is AI

  • Self service checkouts. Please wait for assistance.

    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.

    Gift basket with milk, cheese, wine, carrots, herbs, and “HAPPY BIRTHDAY! To Sarah!” card
    Of course this is AI – who opens a bottle of wine on their way home from the shops.