I am, as you know Queen of the Unnecessary but Desirable Gadget but even I feel I have now bitten off more than I can chew.

I have just about got to grips with the Megalomaniac Coffee Machine. It’s fine as long was I do what it says. It has three sorts of descaler plus all sorts of other parts to clean or rinse with astonishing regularity. It’s now cruelly telling me that 1) I have to descale it after about 5 more cups of coffee and 2) That I shall have to clean the milk pipework in 2 days. This is all fine but I have not yet got to grips with how it can understand, in theory, that there is ground (decaffeinated) coffee in  one dispenser and use that before its habitual grinding of whole caffeinated beans kicks in. I shall save that for another day.

I understand the basic functions of the combi microwave; the ordinary fan oven and the steam oven, if not the more esoteric ones. I am happy to use my warming oven to heat plates and keep food resting for a while but I shall soon test its use as a slow cooker.

I can find my way around the Sonos system even though it hasn’t yet been rigged up so that we can play different tracks in the two rooms. Our builder said it could be done but I don’t think it is possible without purchasing another Sonos box.

Today, however, we installed an Apple TV box along with my mother’s old TV on our wall. I say old, it’s only a couple of years old but waste not want not. I can’t understand how it works – we have neither cable nor satellite television – and yet it does. Somehow I can use my phone (or a tiny, slim remote control device) to select channels that I have never seen on television before.

I am the sort of person who loves tech but prefers just to plug it in and for it to work, “Ta da!” like that. I become frustrated when having to make adjustments or otherwise tinker with things. I am impatient when things don’t work immediately. I suppose you could associate this lack of patience with the #lowboredomthreshold. I don’t know.

But that’s the best bit, the Why,” opines the ex-nerd OH, who used to be into electronics and that, though I have never asked him whether he built a clock/bomb. I have no wish whatsoever to know WHY something works. I just need to know that it does. Am I shallow?

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