It's enough to drive a young girl mad

[venta]

This morning, I was made inexplicably happy by my bottle of Boots' facewash. It ran out.

Comments

we can send probes to Mars

[ewx]

...sometimes they even survive the trip...

[thefon]

I'm with you there, it's a joy when simple things work as they should.
"as it says on the tin"
Even better when more complex things "just work" intuitively.

[ringbark]

Venta is not only someone who uses the word fizzog, but who is prepared to commit it to print...well, electrons.

Well done!

[venta]

Is that worthy of congratulation !?

[ringbark]

Absolutely. Show me anyone else who has used the word in their LJ in the last year. No Googling allowed, of course.

[shrydar]

I had to work out what you meant from the context. Fizzog is Aussie vernacular for something of a damp squib.

[bateleur]

Things working is great, but it's a source of endless puzzlement to me that we manage to un-invent formerly working things. My list so far:

* Clothes pegs.
* Cookers.

Yes, you can still buy old-style (working!) versions of both of these... but only if you know where to find them!

[venta]

Really ? In what way to modern cookers/clothes pegs not work ?

I've never bought a cooker, and have judiciously ignored anything plastic that didn't look like a proper clothes peg to me.

[bateleur]

Our new cooker has plenty of stupid features, but my "favourite" is that Zanussi appear to have forgotten how to use a button to make electrical sparks for the purpose of igniting gas burners. My parents' cooker (and every other appliance I've used since) had no problem with this thirty years ago! Now every time we ignite the grill the room ends up smellling slightly of gas and occasionally we're treated to a miniature fireball.

As for clothes pegs, the wooden sort with metal springs in are great not only for pegging clothes to washing lines, but also for holding the tops of bags closed and any number of other things (including making excellent toy catapults). This hasn't stopped retailers across the last 20 years repeatedly offering plastic things for sale which are more specialised, less effective for their particular task than a clothes peg and (to add insult to injury) more expensive.

[feanelwa]

I got perfectly good ordinary clothes pegs from Tesco not long ago. My old housemate then left them all out in the rain to go mouldy.

[bopeepsheep]

Usefully, those pump action things work splendidly when refilled, too. We had one of Kandoo handwash (belonging to the six year old) which now contains Tesco cheapo refill soap and still foams exactly the same way. Hoorah. (I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find it was somehow rigged so that it could not be refilled or broke when you tried or just spat out glop rather than nice white foam.)