mostly david ephgrave

“It’s Christmas time…and there’s no need to be afraid.” Unless you’re playing the Ghostbusters board game, that is. I spend the day at my sister-in-law’s flat with my mother-in-law, my wife and our friend Richard, who was kind enough to give us the game as a family gift. We settled down to play it after dinner, and like any new board game tackled on a festive occasion, it took some getting to grips with. While the design is excellent, and was clearly put together with fans’ interests at heart, the instructions are unbelievably complicated. You need the Enigma Machine to decipher them. Either that, or some sort of code-breaking degree (though I’m sure there’s no such qualification). While it left us flummoxed for at least an hour, with Richard taking responsibility – and therefore the brunt – of the instruction manual translation, by the time we’d got our brains around it, it was a lot of fun. I would have happily played it again straight away. What’...

Packs of Andrex Toilet Tissue now have instructions on the back; this is what it’s come to. I took a photo of this. Has society reached the stage when it needs its hand held through everything*? Do 3.5 billion years of evolution and 200,000 years of human existence amount to this? If you’re of a suitable age and intelligence to read Andrex’s mini manual, surely… surely … you're already armed with this information. You’d know the basics at least. The average child can wipe their own bum at three and read simple sentences at six. By the time you can decipher Andrex’s five-stage Clean Routine, Andrex’s five-stage Clean Routine has been rendered obsolete. I also zoomed into it.   It’s not as if they're imparting anything groundbreaking. There was no rude awakening for me. Stage Three isn’t on my personal agenda, but I don’t fall for subliminal advertising. I suspect their keenness to bring another Andrex product into the equation was the reason fo...

Where would we be without instructions? I had no idea that I was making tea incorrectly. I didn't know about these three simple steps. Think of all the people I have made a cup for in the past; each one quietly seething as they pretended to sip politely.     I didn't know you had to yank the drawstring out at such a jaunty angle, while holding the teabag like a magician doing a card trick. There's definitely some sort of conjuring involved. The string has split in the middle. How is it staying taut? It must be done with magnets.  I'm not sure why you have to hold your hand in a pincer shape while waiting for the tea to brew. Isn't this irrelevant? It looks like one of those claw-cranes you get in amusement arcades.    The illustration peters out before it reaches the arm. Why? They've already drawn the difficult bit.     It must be very hard to pour water in a forked formation (though it would save time when mak...