MP3 player buying tips

Well, that Samsung MP3 player didn't last long. What a piece of rubbish, honestly - I eventually got used to the fiddly controls, but they were so touch-sensitive that, exactly as I predicted, they eventually stopped working altogether.

Or rather, all the buttons started mimicking the behaviour of one another, probably because the contacts on the circuit board were too close together, because some dickwit decided to make the circuit board way smaller than common sense ought to dictate.

The final straw was last night on the train, when the "volume up" button got stuck, continually driving the sound up to maximum volume against my wishes and gradually driving me mad with rage.

So what, in my opinion, goes into making a decent MP3 player?

• Well, most importantly, don't buy one with more than 2MB storage. Anything else, and you'll only ever listen to your favourite tracks, to the detriment of everything else you painstakingly ripped and downloaded. If you buy anything bigger, prepare to forget 70% of your music collection, because it will just get neglected. Sometimes less is more.
• If you really must buy an iPod (and I'm still resisting the urge) then I advise you read up on other users' experiences. I wouldn't buy something where you had to send it away to get the battery replaced. A friend of mine tried to use a home iPod battery replacement, and it's messed up his hard drive.
• Don't pay more than you think your MP3 player is worth. Okay, I'm annoyed that I just spent £35 on an MP3 player that lasted a few months, but if it had been a £200 iPod, I'd be absolutely hopping mad.
• Style over content. Just because your player looks poncey, or is overpriced, doesn't mean it's any good! If you need a credit card to buy it, then it's probably not worth having. If you have more money than sense, don't come to me when your MP3 player breaks.
• You need an inbuilt radio. Because if you're too busy to update your MP3 player, you will get bored with the songs on it very quickly.
• Proper buttons. Never again will I use Samsung's silly little microswitches.

Take that, Mr. Samsung, and stick it in your USB hub.

Plastic bags? They're rubbish.

So M&S is to start charging people for carrier bags. Good on'em, that's what I say. And charge double that. And good luck to Ken Livingstone, extending the congestion charge for high-polluting vehicles.

I resent the way supermarkets and shops automatically give me carrier bags that I don't need. I resent being made to feel like a Martian by shop assistants whenever I refuse one. That's why I have invested in three Co-Op cotton bags which are duly produced whenever I purchase more than I can carry.

You should see the looks on the faces of the assistants in Waitrose when I get out my off-white, Fairtrade, tree-hugging, wholemeal Co-Op bags. You would think that I'd just pulled a pair of soiled underpants out of my pocket. Actually, some retailers, such as my greengrocer, actually appreciate the gesture.

So stop this snobbery NOW, and let's get on with saving the Earth. Honestly, it wasn't that long ago people used to bring their own bags to the shops. Are we all that forgetful?

Tax 'em all, and then double it, that's what I say. Because if that's what it takes to get people thinking about the environment instead of sitting around stuffing pies into their corpulent cakeholes, then all the better.

Guess what? I got a fever and the only prescription is... more cowbell

I'm just lovin' that crazy cowbell at the moment - here's my all-time top cowbell playlist...

• The Move - Do Ya
• Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear The Reaper
• David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
• Climax Blues Band - Couldn't Get It Right
• Status Quo - Don't Drive My Car*
• Beatles - Drive My Car*
• ELO - Evil Woman
• Lou Reed - Vicious
• Booker T - Soul Limbo
• Slade - Bangin' Man

* interestingly enough, the titles of these songs appear to cancel each other out!! How many other songs do this? ("Up, Up and Away" vs "Down Down", for example, or "Don't Go" vs "Go Now"...?)

Lest we forget the Jif lemons...

Having just returned from doing a little Sunday lunchtime light shopping (heavens, do you remember when we used to sit down and eat roast beef at this time of day?) I was more dismayed than ever to see how hard the supermarkets are pushing instant pancake batter, egg whisks, bowls, plastic lemons and other pancake paraphernalia.

Now look here. I'm no puritan (unless you count that hour I spent the other night birching myself with twigs for having a slightly impure thought about that bird who used to be in Coronation Street, you know, the blonde one behind the bar - no, not Bet Lynch) but didn't Shrove Tuesday used to be about using up your spare food, not buying more?

Premise number one: The word 'shrove' is a past tense of the Old English verb 'shrive', which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance. Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the shriving (confession) that Anglo-Saxon Christians were expected to receive immediately before Lent, a period of abstinence placed halfway between Christmas and Easter to counterbalance the excesses of the aforementioned festivals.

The modern purpose of Shrove Tuesday, however, seems to be more about no more than providing a handy stopgap for high-flying marketing bods who need to hijack another traditional Christian festival in order to boost their profits between those other traditional commercial feasts of St. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.

Premise number two: The traditional reason for eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was to use up eggs, milk, sugar and flour immediately prior to the commencement of the fast.

I had to queue for bloody ages in the shops today, because half the world, it seems, was hellbent on systematically emptying the shelves of eggs, milk, sugar and flour, and worse still, instant batter mix (!) in anticipation of Tuesday's forthcoming frivolities. Anyone would have thought war had just been declared.

So this coming Tuesday, while half the world starves, the wealthier half will follow an already oversized meal with a dessert comprising fried discs of batter made from the spoils of their day's hunting in the supermarkets. More pancakes will almost certainly be made than consumed.

Here's one for the older readers. Remember "lemons"? You know, that yellow fruit whose juice was squeezed over the cooked "Pan Cakes". Lemons were (and still are) inexpensive and widely available from "greengrocers", a subgenre of friendly independent traders called "shopkeepers" who used to occupy that Tesco Metro at the end of your road. (You know, the ones doing 'buy one get one free' on plastic lemons.)

(Incidentally, the brand of plastic lemons associated with Pancake Day are manufactured by the same firm who make Domestos, Vaseline and OMO washing powder, which I honestly didn't think had been in the shops since the late 1960s.)

Plastic lemons are not biodegradeable. Don't buy them. Real ones are perfectly environmentally-friendly, and they don't contain nasty artificial preservatives such as sodium metabisulphite either. (As an additive, sodium metabisulphite may cause allergic reactions, particularly skin irritation, gastric irritation and asthma. It is not recommended for consumption by children.)

Real lemons have a myriad of other uses, such as being an efficient all-round cleaning agent. A selection of these can be found here.

Suddenly, I really don't fancy pancakes.

Here endeth today's lesson.

Wunderbar!!*

Yes, it's true - the pic's a bit blurry, but this is none other than Edward Tudor-Pole (Tenpole Tudor, Sex Pistols) and Roman Jugg (The Damned) playing "Swords Of A Thousand Men" at my local pub last night.

Yeah, that's right. My local.

They were excellent, by the way: Ed played acoustic guitar and sang enthusiastically throughout, showing Elvis and Lonnie Donegan influences with a soupcon of Status Quo. Last night's show was deafeningly loud, well received by the audience and probably best enjoyed absolutely steaming drunk. Which, in fact, I was.

* Oh, they didn't play "Wunderbar", sadly!