Did you ever need more reasons not to trust the French?

Forget the Rainbow Warrior or the South Pacific nuclear tests, did you ever need more reason not to trust the French?

This would have been taken moments before stumbling, elsewhere in the kitchen, across ' le crime magnifique de morceaux de pain dans le beurre'

Sacre bleu!

www.domesticcrimes.com

The Bonsai Fruitbowl

This is another of those 'I never really thought that there was a right and wrong way to do whatever'-type of photos. It was sent in by someone who was one of those 'Doesn't everyone know this is the way you are supposed to do whatever'-type of people.

The thing is I don't eat grapes (perhaps that's because of a repressed memory of being told off for not doing it the right way), so I would never have been aware of this issue. However, substitute the bowl for a matchbox and the grapes for matches, some of which were burnt and some unburnt, but all jumbled up together.

Now you're on my radar

www.domesticcrimes.com

A slight problem with closure

Oooooooohh, isn't it just a treat to discover you live with one of those, oh-so-considerate individuals who recognise the terrible difficulty inherent in opening a long-plastic tube that has a large, hard-to-miss opening in one end of it, so they try to ensure that the tube is perpetually open, just for your convenience?

Well I, for one, actually do think it is a treat and a convenience, because then you generally have a readily available sack of stale bread with which to beat them around the head.


http://www.domesticcrimes.com/

The Empty Return - Part 1: The Fuel Tank

As a teenager, I can distinctly remember the way my heart would lighten ever so slightly when, on buckling into mum or dad's car, I saw that the fuel needle came up anywhere near full.

It used to never occur to me that the position of the needle on return could have the reverse effect.

www.domesticcrimes.com

Open other side

It can provide great enjoyment to poke fun at people who do things like this because you are thinking to yourself 'How can they do this, when it is so clearly marked? Is it really that hard to stop and think before acting?'.

When treading the path of the comic, it is always easy to take the self-righteous point of view, lampooning the bufoonery of others for a certain lack of intellect and skill that the comic, by implication, possesses in bulk.

However it might also provide enjoyment to some of you to know that, for all of my procedural pontification in relation to opening cartons, the other day I actually caught myself doing exactly this.

The Beached Tea Bags

I know its a little thing, but this epidemic is absolutely disgusting and inexcusable. My mother did point out once that she does this because she makes very weak tea and actually re-uses the bags (I also think that is disgusting), but most people just do this because they’re lazy.

And leaving the spent bags in the sink, although neater from a visual and wet-spot prevention perspective, is just as bad.

The thing is, that my vehemence regarding this particular crime has promoted backlash. I once drew the scorn of two past female housemates who collected an entire day’s worth of spent bags, which I later found in my room that night when I went to bed, hanging from the wooden bed head like the corks around the rim of a stockman’s hat.

Needless to say that has just served to fuel my campaign for the eradication of this heinous crime.

The CD Case

This is something I just can’t understand people doing. It is like, and this is something I actually confess to doing regularly, making the effort to sweep up but then leaving little piles of dirt in strategic locations or like taking the care to wipe your arse, but deciding to omit the paper (not something I can recall having ever done...).

The irony is that they are the very same people who come back later saying, ‘Have you seen my Massive Attack CD?’

‘No, now bugger off.’

Hardcore heavy petting....

Now I love pets, but hardcore pet lovers are wierd. And this is just plain disgusting. You'd think that for someone who's obsessed with their dog that they might have actually watched what their pooch actually does with its mouth ...

The irony is that these very same people probably can't sit on a public toilet seat without putting half a roll of loo paper on the seat ... and the other half in the bowl to provide a hygienic, splash-free landing pad.

Moving house...

Ughhh... So why have I not managed to post anything for the past three and a half weeks?

The answer is probably one of the worst domestic crimes of all time - moving house.

I think this activity involves all of the worst aspects of domestic order and disorder and I can wholeheartedly say that I hate it with every fibre of my being.

I think this stems from my acceptance that good systems for keeping your home life in order are highly meritorious. I hate doing things inefficiently, wasting time looking for stuff or just plain forgetting things. I also hate having to clean up one mess before I can work on creating another. So, even if they are somewhat halfbaked due to lack of time or organisational skills, I normally have some systems for day to day living that make my life easier.

But these all get screwed completely when you move house.

Firstly, unless you have a fantastic system when you pack, you will always end up with a number of boxes that are full of all sorts of odds and ends - all the bits and pieces that you left out until the last minute when you were packing, because you really needed them accessible, up to the last minute. So then you have a few boxes of this sort of stuff which get put in odd places when you arrive at the new house, because, in spite of having the presence of mind to actually write a label on the boxes, nothing more descriptive than the word "stuff" was written on any of them. So there are all these important things that you needed, right up to the last minute, that you just can't find once you've moved.

That is why I am now the proud owner of a two mobile phone chargers - the original one turning up about 3 hours after I had bought its replacement.

The process of re-adjustment continues for weeks afterwards. Simple things like putting on a CD take ages, because when you grab the CD, you are not sure that the way you have organised the music genres is optimal. So then you change things around, only to mean that you can't find CD's the next time around because things are not the way you remember them.

Another thing I really hate is this farcical idea that hiring removalists makes moving house easy. Easier perhaps, but not easy. If you really want to make moving house a breeze, here are a few things I would want the removalists to do:

• the six hours of back breaking, knuckle abrading cleaning required after you the point in the move that you thought 'Gee, it is all pretty much done now'
• change all of my address details with the entire world, especially those companies whose arses can't talk to their elbows and need an address change within each of 7 separate divisions.
• chase up disappeared housemates from shared houses who have left outstanding debts or outstandingly well-cultivated cesspits in their rooms.

Yes, there are sooooooo many things I hate about moving house, and these are just a few - it is like time that is robbed from you, never to be returned and with little to redeem the experience.

Have you ever heard someone come out of a move saying, 'Well that wasn't exactly pleasant, but I really did learn something from that'?

Crimes of Passion - the unwelcome gift left by a transient lover

I hope the sex was better than his bedside manner.

But there is an upside to this scenario; on discovering the little present your hit and run driver has left under the bed, at least you know there won't be a rubber floatie waiting for you in the bathroom.

I don't think that I have ever done this to someone... well at least on those occasions I can recall.