I’ve long thought that I’d like to be a person who always has champagne in the house. A couple of years ago we managed to stockpile to an impressive 18-bottle high when an unexpected box arrived but now the racks and fridge are bare. Oh if only we were rich enough to make popping a couple of bottles into the trolley (cart for my American friends) part of the normal weekly visit to the supermarket, but alas, that is just a dream.

So I will graciously accept bottles as gifts. Any size, any Champagne house. The tiny Piccolo and larger 375ml bottles taste just as delicious and are often more useful, thereby offering a range of price points!

Houses in rough preference order would be:

• Veuve Clicquot
• Taittinger
• Laurent Perrier
• Moet & Chandon
• Louis Roederer

Really irks me when product writers put those of us who are damn good at our jobs to shame. Or perhaps in this case there was no product writer, that they thought their users would ‘just figure it out’ or they left the writing of instructions in the geeks hands … don’t get me wrong, geeks are brilliant, it’s amazing what they can do, but they and the people that employ them need to realise that there are just some things they’re not good at. And that that’s OK.

It’s just a small thing, and yes I did figure out what to do, but I ALWAYS notice stuff like this and get annoyed by it:

Errr, where’s ‘No’?