Later, January 10th 2012

Technology is great. Progress is great. The super duper turbo on my car has shit the bed and is in the process of generating an eight hundred euro repair bill for me over at the mechanic’s. I have a super duper Hotpoint Aquarius dishwasher that refuses to contemplate any delph on the top shelf, let alone clean it. I have a super duper scanner that doesn’t work necessitating frequent trips to the office centre in town to, get this, use their fax machine. (Don’t forget to factor in here the mortification of asking someone for a fax number in 2012, you don't recover from that overnight). On the kids game console you can either have a black and white picture or sound, but you can’t have both. The two year old wedged a video tape in the VHS player (I know, I know) that cannot be extracted. I have a super duper geothermal heating system that does not generate any heat in 40% of my house. The fridge creates, all on its lonesome, a two litre pool of water in the bottom vegetable drawer every three days. I have a super duper motion sensing outside light that I can only turn off by getting up a step ladder and removing the bulb. I can watch something on YouTube as long as I’m within a four foot radius of the modem.(Uncongested broadband Mr. Eircom, are you quite sure?) The screen on my phone disintegrated, I can’t read anything on it and can’t use any of the spare ones in the house because they have all been locked by evil bastard other networks. The baleful machinery Gods are politely requesting that I show them more respect. And I have no choice but to comply.