daily life: flash under the pan

I'm all for technology proliferating into our daily lives, in particular I m still wowed by the keyless entry and ignition on my car. But sometimes needlessly adding flashy features to daily activites just makes them tediously annoying, none more annoying than the 'high tech' electric hobs that seem to be all the rage these days. My flat has one of those flashy glass touch panel doo-hickies without any buttons that morons who don't actually cook but want everybody to know how rich and stylish they are always have despite the fact it doesn't actually work (Yay for run-on sentences).Coupled with the fact that electric hobs just don't fecking work, you either boil over the pan or it just sits there doing nothing like it caught ME, and forget about frying sausages. What idiot decided to integrate an iPhone with my hob, if I want to turn the light up I have to press a 'button' to change mode, and probably press it again because it was in the wrong mode to start with, and then press some more buttons some more times. What was wrong with turning a knob, when I was a lad we didn't have touch buttons, we had to make do with knobs and we were happy to have them.

Driving: stay at pump

I'm sure many of you have been at a petrol station, you've already paid, but you can't leave because the owner of the car in front is still inside the shop. To make it worse, after 10 minutes that feel more like 10 hours, the owner of said car trundles out laden with half-a-dozen shopping bags with content ranging from asbestos through to zebra steaks.

The first fault lies with the petrol station who have failed to understand sticking 2 extra pumps in to 'maximise profits', therefore requiring the pumps to be placed just far enough apart to successfully dispense the delicious petrol, ultimately results in so many queues you halve the amount of customers you can serve in any given period of time.

Secondly the moron that decides to do their weekly shop at the petrol station needs to be locked in a deep dark pit while children point and laugh at them. And why is it always woman? I could understand if it was a single man whose idea of 'Haute Cuisine' is a creme egg served with a 'Frijj' jus, they could therefore shop quite comfortable at the 'Gas 'n' Go', but when you start asking the spotty teen behind the counter where the foie gras is maybe you should change your shopping habits.