They’ve never asked me to accessorise anything before. Good place to start…

My kettle.

Oh Morphy Richards…
Why did you make a kettle
With such fragile hinges that
The very heat of water boiling
In the kettle made them turn to
Soft and squidgy plastic that did shear,

It made me shed a tear.

And why did I then…

Remember that the guarantee
That came with that old kettle was
Discarded as per usual into
Essex County Council’s scheme
For getting rid of things,

That need recycling?

A further question…
That after such a disappointing
Quality of kettle hinges
Issue with our Morphy Richards
I should venture forth unto the
Local shop that sells replacement

Kettles, from the bargain basement

Tesco own-brand model that just
Doesn’t fit quite with the other
Useless chrome appliances that
Somehow fill someone with rapture
Even when the manufacture

Leaves more than a little bit to
Be desired but what of it, it’s
Just another lump of plastic
Destined to become more spastic
Slurry in a landfill ditch

And so I bought another Morphy Richards.

[coda ]

And guess what…?

The monkeys that designed this thing
Forgetting that the boiling
Of water would tend to produce
A certain quantity of steam…

That would then by necessity
Just rise up to the lid you see
And so become a hazard when
The lid should be pressed down again…

E.g. when you have filled it up
To have another pleasant cup
Of tea, except the second time
Will not, I’m sure, be as sublime…

Because they made the lid of chrome
To match the shiny sides and lo!
They do reflect a lot of light
But that’s to miss the point that I

Have burned my fucking hand because
The lid of this device just was
As hot as boiling water, and

Surprise at that was only dwarfed
By lack of the surprise, of course,

That it was yet another Morphy Richards.

Classic personalisation from BT

I’m not sure which is worse… the broken field in the welcome message, or “BT Wholesale is a world class enabler of converged network solutions” (this means “BT Wholesale sells network capacity around the world”, by the way).

What’s my problem…?

I have a Natwest business banking account, so it looks vaguely professional when I ask people for money as part of my self-employed activities.

They don’t manage that account: I do. Almost everything that happens to the account is done online, by me. In spite of this they charge me for pretty much everything.  

Every time a client pays me via BACS, or I pay in a cheque, they charge me.  Every time I transfer money from my business account to my (Natwest) personal accounts, they charge for that too. I don’t earn interest on the balance in my business account. They of course do.

At the same time they waste that money sending me an endless stream of junkmail advertising loans, insurance and other services that I have never expressed an interest in.

So here’s why I’m annoyed. Natwest charges me for the privilege of being able to spend my own time moving money around my own accounts – money on which they’ll earn interest.

Now, to rub salt in, they spend even more money advertising services I don’t want, on TV, by filming the process they go through to irritate me with their junkmail that I don’t want but that I pay for by spending my own time managing my own money on which they earn interest.

Stupid, hateful bank.

Very environmentally friendly.

Six CDs ordered from Amazon. 

Knock-down price with free delivery.

This is how they arrive: all at once in individual packages, individually posted.

And they’re still making money from us.

[Da na nah na nah]

I did find a leaflet 
In pdf format
Said discoloration
Was likely the result of a change in flow caused by a burst main or possibly firefighting activity that had stirred up iron deposits in the water pipes.

[Da na nah na nah]

That would have been helpful
If just above it
There wasn’t a sentence
Explaining that white cloudiness is nothing to worry about and if you find your water to be white and cloudy it is perfectly safe to drink.

[Da na nah na nah]

So this is the problem
I’m telling you now
I’d drink the white water
Not water that’s brown because while it says explicitly that white cloudy water is safe to drink and gives a perfectly plausible explanation for the brown colour of my water this morning it does not say whether brown water caused by iron deposits stirred up by a change in flow of the water in the water main possibly because of a burst pipe or firefighting activity is safe to drink or not safe to drink, and that kind of sloppy copywriting would be bad enough in a blues song or some other inconsequential lyric or piece of collateral but in a leaflet purporting to explain everything you need to know about water quality in the Three Valleys area it’s pretty much unforgivable and this kind of thing makes me really hopping angry or at least it does since i stopped smoking and drinking and have to rely on the fucking brown cloudy water supply to keep my increasingly fat and greasy body alive, you fucks.

[Da na nah na nah]