Household stuff that doesn’t work

HOW hard can it be to make a telephone cord that behaves itself?

We can make intricate and complex bits of machinery that worm their way through our internal organs taking photos as they go. We can send equally complex ironmongery to Mars to take pictures of it (though I don’t know why we bother).

Why, then, can’t I have a telephone cord that is straight, and that stays that way.

I am looking at my telephone cord as I write. It resembles a small and tightly knotted brain. Every morning I stand on my chair and suspend the handpiece from height of 2.5 metres. It spins like a Dervish on Ecstasy as the cord unknots itself. I replace it carefully in its cradle.

Next morning I have to do it again.

I could nail it out on a board and next morning it would still look like a nest of worms.

Come on guys! Invent something better! I’ll even pay more. Or have all the really clever inventors joined NASA and the medical profession?

What about a retracting cord like I have on the vacuum cleaner? Surely that can’t be hard?

And while we’re at it, what about all those other household items that don’t actually work?

Bottles of fruit juice that are designed to pour the first quarter of the juice on the work surface and the floor.

Perhaps I’m being harsh, though. One of the undiscovered secrets of the known universe — like perpetual motion — is a receptacle that pours its contents where you aim.

But what about mousetraps? I have six mousetraps that don’t trap anything. They function merely as a dining table for mice. Every morning they’re empty (no food, and no mice) and they’re still set.

Have you ever found a dustpan into which you can actually sweep all the dust? There’s always some that refuses to play the game, and stays on the floor in an irritating little line.

And why do drawer handles have a sell-by date? I want my drawers to have handles until I die. How come we can invent a glue that will fix my granddaughter to the fireguard for a thousand years, but we can’t invent a screw, glue or nail that will keep a drawer knob in place.

And while we’re talking glue, how dare they market little hooks to glue on your bathroom wall when they don’t!

And while we’re talking hooks, what’s the point in a cup hook that is too small, too narrow or too fat to take the handle of the damned cup!

And kitchen tongs that go out of alignment after two days so they are no longer capable of picking up anything smaller than a Holden Commodore.

And ring binders that aren’t rings and don’t bind.

I have a ring binder. The jaws don’t meet. The rings are actually spirals and the contents are all over the floor.

Are you seeing a common thread here…? We’re talking kitchen, mostly. Except for the ring binders, when we’re talking office administration. Both the traditional domains of women. An unpalatable fact, but a fact nevertheless.

And who, I wonder, are the inventors? Women, perhaps?

Pig’s arse!

These things have all the hallmarks of men, starting with the fact that they work only rarely and then only for a short time.

It explains why the world is a mess. God is definitely a man.