Week 57

Sunday 19 April 2020

• One of the bread carriages of the toaster (a Russell Hobbs 18780) is broken and wobbles about and doesn’t pop up properly. So I found myself taking the thing to bits, like Alan Partridge with his Corby trouser press, but not purely out of boredom – maybe I could fix it.

  Reader, I couldn’t fix it. Maybe with some pliers one could straighten the bent metal that seems to be the problem, but I don’t have any. Reassembling it, I accidentally disconnected a wire, and tripped the fusebox a few times during the ensuing trial and error, and possibly broke something else.

  The upshot is I’ve bought a new toaster, a Which? best buy (the Russell Hobbs 24081), which boasts improved browning evenness (surely an admission that the old model was shit). Alas, it also seems to have a tendency to trip the fusebox, possibly when defrosting frozen bread or using the “lift and look” (sometimes called “peek and pop”) feature. Cool story.

• I bought some hummus (reduced for quick sale), which was horribly sweet and a funny colour. Turned out I’d accidentally bought caramelised onion hummus. Oh well, in some ways it would be worse to discover that I actually like caramelised onion hummus and had been missing out for all these years.

• Of course I’d been looking forward to Quiz, the ITV “couging major” drama, ever since maybe last year when I heard about Michael Sheen playing Chris Tarrant. And wasn’t it the televisual event of the week?

• Some work. Made the search feature better, so folks can finally see click beyond the first page of results, and I’m happier that it no longer depends on Elasticsearch and Haystack, although there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s an improworsement in one respect: there’s no “did you mean?” if you can’t spell.

  Of course the business is adversely affected by less advertising money sloshing about, and fewer people using buses, and nobody using intercity coaches, woe unto me, but I’ll be fine.

Stay well.