A long time ago, I went to a friend’s wedding at which the best man made an amusing observation about the groom. He said he was the kind of man who, upon buying a computer or food processor or some such apparatus, would sit down and read the manual cover to cover before he’d got the machine out of the box. How I laughed, because I’m totally the opposite. But the joke’s on me.
Until recently, I drove an estate car with a really useful feature. Instead of opening the tailgate fully, you could just flip open the back window for easy access. Nice. Hardly life-changing, but nice. The unfortunate thing was that, having driven the car for three years, it was only on the day I took it back to the dealership where the dealer checked the car over that I learned about the feature. Ooh, I said, as she popped it open, I never knew it could do that.
More fool me. I never trouble myself with manuals. I just get whatever it is out of the box and start pressing buttons until something happens. For years I’ve been using a kitchen gadget called a Thermomix when making bread. It can knead dough, which is good, but my word, the time I’ve spent trying to clean it afterwards. Soaking, scraping, soaking again, worrying away at it for hours. In fact, it was such a fiddle that eventually I gave up and went back to doing my own kneading. And then, this week, I accidentally pressed something and up popped a dough-cleaning function. Clean as a whistle in five minutes flat. I was furious.
I must be surrounded by stuff packed with features I’ll never use. How much time could I save myself if I took the trouble to do a bit of homework? I know what a bit of hell might look like: somebody will stand there pointing out all the brilliant features I’ve missed out on. They’ll do it in the manner of Bullseye host Jim Bowen showing unsuccessful contestants the speedboat they could have won. Here’s how much of your time on Earth you frittered away doing things which could have been done for you, if only you’d taken the trouble to read the manuals.
