Reasons why I didn't get as much done this morning as I could have

I must say, I've not had something so useless put through the door for a long time.  Not, in fact, since I got  my last copy of that catalogue called 'Innovations' which used to be delivered free, with all those great descriptions of nose hair clippers and special spoons to lift boiled eggs out with and little bits of material that you clipped to your clothes to hide your cleavage.

We got this 'Fat Trap' thing come through, sent by the local water board to encourage us not to pour fat or oils down the drains.  Have you had one?  It comes like this - a bit like a cardboard cover for a CD - and you make it into a box.  (My apologies now if your Fat Trap is actually your most prized possession.  My commiserations, also, to any of your close family or friends.)

I'm not saying I don't agree with the concept.  As they said in the accompanying leaflet, it's a pain for them, unblocking local drains because people have poured fat straight down them.

It's just that we went through this puzzling rigmarole, following all the instructions with concentrated frowns on our faces while we worked it all out, and it all turned out to have been for nothing.  The instructions went something like this:

1. Squeeze the edges of the cardboard so that the box pops up.  [Yeah, right.  For 'pops', read 'finally forms itself into a box with much persuasion'.]

2. Make sure the box is sealed and secure on the sides. [The husband had to go and get a butter knife so that we could mangle the sides into the positions they were meant to be in.]

3. Unpeel the sticky bit over the box's opening, and take out the piece of white paper in the middle of the box.  [I did, but as we hadn't been told yet what this piece of white paper was about, this was a bit mystifying.  Still, I could always put it by the phone to take a message on.]

4. Push down inside the box with your finger so that the plastic inner lining is fully open.  [This felt very strange.  I'm sure it's a common enough feeling for a surgeon, foraging around in someone's abdomen, but to me it was weird.  I felt distinctly under-qualified.]

5. Replace the sticky bit until you are ready to use the Fat Trap.  [This seemed to make a lot of assumptions.  I was, minute by minute, deciding NOT to use the Fat Trap, and had just said to my husband, 'If they think I'm putting a bright blue cardboard box on my kitchen surface with 'Fat Trap' written on it, and then filling it with smelly old frying oil, they can go eat slugs.]

6. We were then instructed that, when the Fat Trap was full of fat, you would use the piece of white paper, which turned out to be a peelable label, to seal the box before you put it in the rubbish bin.  [That was a shame, because while I'd been faffing about, the phone had rung, my husband had answered it, and the paper now had 'Louise says 11.30 is fine' written on it.]

7. To add INSULT to INJURY, at the end of the instructions, it said, 'When you have used your Fat Trap, you can either purchase another one from the website (oh, thanks!) or put your fats in a used margarine tub!

What a waste of twenty minutes of my life.  Why didn't they just send us a letter saying, 'Dear Householder.   Please put your oils and fats in a margarine tub.  Love, Your Local Water Board.'?

I'm telling you, there's a conspiracy out there to stop us from living our lives, reading papers, eating chocolate, phoning grannies, etc etc, like normal people.  And anyway I'm in my own Fat Trap.  I don't need theirs.