"For reasons unknown, the Roborock treats loose wires like a stage. He spins on them. Twirls. Pirouettes. And then, inevitably, throws a tantrum. “The mop mount fell off,” he announces, half-ashamed, half-accusing, before pinging a notification to my phone like it’s my fault he got tangled in the first place."

I crouched down and unclipped the plastic top off of the vacuum mop. A sigh silently fell out from my chest as I watched dirty water gently pool around the unit—hair and grey drops of water quickly wiped away before I tugged the damp roller loose from its fitting. The surprisingly good Tineco FLOOR ONE S5 Extreme needed more care and attention than I often gave myself, but it has to be done else it’ll begin to grow mould. Much like myself, I thought, thinking I hadn’t showered for a few days....

"I could’ve chewed this without chewing."

And so it begins. The most wonderful time of the year steamrolls every supermarket's shitty plastic Halloween decorations and decaying pumpkins into the trash, replacing the once-spooky shelving displays with deep reds, rich holly leaf greens, and picturesque images of snow-covered Victorian London streets, which seem laughably out of place judging by the run-down dirty streets that crawl through this nation. On one typically bleak English afternoon, I strode with purpose through a dismal ind...

"One boot to rule them all, and in the dark, bind them. My feet that is. Painfully."

Let me state for the record, I absolutely did not spend £625 on a pair of goddamn boots. I got these at the Crockett & Jones factory in Northampton where they also sell their seconds—shoes that aren't deemed 100% perfect and are sold at a big discount. I think I got these for £250, which is still insane, but the defect in this pair was an almost imperceptible scratch on the toebox. Whenever I visit my parents in the Northamptonshire countryside, I grit my teeth to resist the urge to wander ...

"Once in place, the happy robot voice told me to start the self-cleaning mode. I thought, Why don’t you do it yourself? I couldn’t help but wonder how it’s smart enough to auto-detect suction and water levels at any given time, and even alert me when the tanks are full or empty, yet it can’t figure out when it needs a self-clean."

It's Sunday, the day when my partner and I are both home at the same time and the chosen day to clean our apartment only for us to work for the rest of the week, hardly be in it, and still have it turn into a mess. I'm stood there with an almost 10-year-old Dyson V8, with a replaced head and battery, kicking around a bucket and mop combo from room to room thinking to myself, I can send a picture of my ballbag to an AI and have it examine them for any abnormalities or write a sonnet about it, ...

"Before I even had a chance to register what on planet Earth was going on, we were explained that there was a €13 minimum spend per head as if it was a backstreet all-you-can-eat shitbox."

Aligned with the over-priced tourist junk shops and the themed pubs about the ankle-cracking cobbled streets of Bratislava's beautiful Old Town, sat another tourist trap bedecked with old-timey portraits of what I'm assuming are of people who never existed, stained glass windows, and regally painted flourishes adoring every free space possible: the Konditorei Kormuth café. Perpetually swarmed with people leering through the window to marvel at the migraine-inducing interior and touted as a "...

"This Bisto curry sauce was like a corrupted memory of actual curry sauce"

Here, in my little dusty nook of this new and instantaneous world in a universe brimming with videos on demand, lightning-fast data access via the information superhighway, and instant copy-and-paste face upgrades, there has always been a sacred pocket of simplicity that only poked at the rapid future we steamrolled into - a time where only food preparation was instant. Coffee had been dried and crumbled down to a pitiful jar of mud-looking granules and sold as a convenience, gravy that would...

"Here comes Nothing"

I've never been one to spend money and resources on buying the latest and greatest phone year after year with the only actual noticeable difference being the +1 they add to the model name, and I've never understood people queueing outside the Apple Store to get their device with 1000 million megapixel cameras and 400TB of RAM to just take pictures of themselves with their balls out in front of a dirty mirror. Guess I'm getting old... Anyway, I've rocked hand-me-down phones (iPhones and then ...

"I could feel my day slipping away from me like the £6.25 I had spent on this box of dropped-looking turds"

Out of care for the earth and sheer laziness, I've been buying from Riverford Farms; an organic 'you get what we grow' seasonal-type fruit and veg box, and as the festive season began its boisterous entrance, Riverford announced they were selling mince pies that piqued my Christmas curiosity and got my taste buds ring ting tingling, too. It arrived in a simple box which visually spoke 'organic', 'good for the earth', and 'because of the other two points, I'm mightily expensive'. Flipping tha...

"The filling felt like the taste equivalent of an asterix at the end of a word; easily unnoticed"

For me, the Christmas season only starts when I procure boxes of mass-produced mince pies and eat myself into sheer insensibility, and right off the rip, this is a bad way to invite festive cheer into my life. Like every year, Tesco has a selection of mince pies going from the standard "Tesco Value" mince pies, up to the snooty Tesco's Finest range. I set aside my life of pure luxury in the name of festive science with the cheapest box available and upon employing an exiting walk like Scroog...

"Perfect for scrambled egg stock photography"

I'm not usually influenced by anything, but as soon as I read a book or watch a cartoon about space, I suddenly and desperately want to become a space cowboy. What's better than turning your back on some small and easily resolved issue, then hopping into your spaceboat and sailing off to the other end of the galaxy? Certainly not the food you'd be eating on the way. Crackd - The No-Egg Egg most likely won't be the de facto egg substitute of future space rangers, because it sure-as-balls isn't...