Happy Birthday MM

It’s Coopers (of Stortford) catalogue time again

I had to wait until page fourteen, but it was worth it. You can buy a red version of the canine lampshade of shame for your pots and pans. Yes: “No More Hob Spills!”. Be gone forever, pesky hob spills.

Did you know that you can raise your toilet seat a mind-boggling four inches (page twenty nine) with the plastic bogseat extension thingy. While we’re in the bathroom, there’s also a 360º swivelling seat, for those bathroom occasions when you feel the need to sit, and swivel.

There is (page thirty eight) a wind-up radio, with torch. Who came up with that one? Has anyone, ever, looked at their radio and thought: “wish it had a torch, that radio, that would make it a much more useful dual purpose item, a torch would.”

The shredder on page forty eight is pictured under the heading TOP SECRET! Have they not seen ‘Argo’? Shredding is hardly document destruction of MI5 standards.

There’s page after page of garden tools prefixed by the word ‘telescopic’.

Among the most ridiculous things I’ve seen are the lawn aeration sandals. Imagine flip-flops with a dozen six-inch nails driven through the soles. The blurb says these are additionally beneficial to soil organisms such as earthworms. That is, as long as they’re not on your footfall tracks or deeper than six inches, presumably. Otherwise they might feel a slight stabbing sensation that is wholly unbeneficial.

The rotary mower blade clamp (page eighty two): “clamps the rotary blade [well it would, wouldn’t it?]…avoiding any accidental start up”. BLISS might want to take issue with this, after all her struggles to achieve non-accidental start-up.

Who’s left?

Is there anyone left to be on the telly? The cells are filling up with ‘em. The shocking news is that Clarkson hasn’t been done for anything. Yet.

I found a Preserves cookbook…

…and glanced through it. So, the first three attempts are pickled cucumber, lime pickle, and mushroom ketchup. The cucumber is in the jar, ready in three to four weeks. The limes and mushrooms are in bowls on top of the fridge (anti-D the Dog interference measures) doing overnight stuff with salt and turmeric (the limes) and salt (the mushrooms). There’s some interesting mint jelly and rosemary jelly recipes in there, too.

Happy birthday…

…to MM. Have a good one, see you tomorrow.