For once, a gripe which has nothing to do with the BBC news website...

Today it was my intention to catch up on some outstanding tasks, including making some sweetcorn relish out of the cobs which Riverford have been delivering lately (none of us really like corn on the cob in the raw, as it were). This not being the sort of thing one does everyday, I had a trawl around the net for suitable recipes, selected one and then remembered the black ink cartridge in the printer needed changing. Obviously this would have to be done before I could trot back to the kitchen and get started on stinking the house out with boiling vinegar again.

So what? I hear you all shout, 'Surely she's not so technophobic as to be completely incapable of changing a printer cartridge?'. Well, you'd think this would be a relatively simple task, wouldn't you? Dream on, gentle reader. Opening the new cartridge box (a trial in itself as it seemed to be packed to withstand several nuclear winters) I discovered these cartridges have chips attached, which you have to transfer from old to new before the things will do their job. Prising the annoying little item out of the old cartridge was next to impossible and I only succeeded by levering it off with that most old-fashioned of implements - a HB pencil. Then ensued the pantomime of trying to get the wretched little thing into the new cartridge - into a space which bore little resemblance to its corresponding part on the old cartridge. Bear in mind this chip is about 2mm square. Several minutes of swearing, crawling around on the floor trying to see where the chip had decided to leap to now, and still not having any luck persuading it into the space where it was meant to go, I attempted to stick it in with a tiny piece of folded-up Sellotape. This at least held it in place, and I got it into the printer OK, but then the printer didn't seem to recognise the fact the new cartridge was fitted. (I suspect the sellotape wasn't letting it make a connection with something crucial). Taking it out again, I realised the thing was leaking everywhere and quickly bunged it into the nearest waterproof receptacle - a milk jug. My hands looked as if I'd been doing an audition to play Al Jolson, but thankfully none of the ink seems to have gone on the carpet.

I am sure all of you who know me can imagine what a rage this fiasco put me in. Scrubbing my hands free of black ink, the levels of abuse directed at printer and cartridge manufacturers, inventors of microchips and whichever muppet had the bright idea of chipping printer cartridges in the first place gradually subsided until I could think more philosophically about the issue. What sort of society do we live in where people will go to the trouble to microchip small pieces of plastic so they can grub more profit out of printer-consumables than they do out of selling the printer in the first place - but aren't prepared to give old people enough money to keep themselves warm over the winter? It just shows where the community's priorities are, doesn't it? I hope if any of my readers are involved in the printer consumables industry they are royally ashamed of themselves.

For your information, my recipe was duplicated by the Neanderthal means of my copying it by hand from screen to paper with the help of the aforementioned HB pencil. The cartridge and its Godforsaken chip is now in the bin.