17 things I learned this week

The most frustrating start to the working day may be to fill a bowl with cereal, sugar and fruit only to find there is no milk. And to then toast some bread, only to find there is no butter.

Pre-ordering something from Amazon is no guarantee of actually receiving it. Ever.

Having a crocked phone return from temporary fixedness back into brokenitude can reduce even the best day to tooth-grinding frustration.

None of the five phone shops on the high street will sell a handset on its own.

Phone shops are all identical and all feel like estate agents (or would do, if estate agents didn't now feel like trendy wine bars).

I can quite happily spend 7 hours sitting in a chair painting warhammer models by lamplight.

Spending 7 hours sitting in a chair painting warhammer models by lamplight can cause back cramps, hand cramps, reduced vision and a total loss of street cred.

Cooking rice is more difficult than I thought.

Spending two minutes with one's hand under a cold tap after burning it on a pan lid is exactly the right amount of time to forget how the burn was acquired, causing one to burn their other hand in exactly the same way.

Spending ages holding one's hands under cold water after burning them is a good way to also allow rice to burn.

It is entirely possibly to cook two things in the same pan and leave one dangerously undercooked whilst burning the other.

It is possible to cause the racks in dishwashers to collapse.

When the racks in dishwashers collapse, all the plates in the dishwasher fall over.

The sound of all the plates in a dishwasher falling over is loud, unpleasant and terrifies cats.

The other effect of all the plates in a dishwasher falling over is that many of the plates become chipped and/or broken.

After waiting for months for a holiday from work, I now can't relax because I'm worried that my colleagues will discover all of the crappy work I do that can only be successfully concealed when I'm there to actively hide it.

Once started, watching the West Wing, even for the third time, is not something it is possible to stop doing.