- by Owen Morton
Now, I don’t wish to sound ungrateful, but some of the Christmas presents I received this year verged just this side of the thoroughly ridiculous. (‘This’ being the wrong side.) I mean, Big Mouth Billy Bass seems positively intellectual when placed next to some of the things I got. Take the Booze-ometer, for example. This purports to be a reliable indicator of when you’re drunk. Firstly, I can tell when I’m drunk, and second, it’s nothing of the kind. It’s one of those things that you have get the metal rod around without touching it, and if you do touch it, it makes a buzzing noise. You hopefully know what I mean by that, because I really didn’t explain it very well. But anyway, I can’t do those things even when I haven’t been drinking, so does this mean that I’m drunk all the time by the Booze-ometer’s standards?
The Booze-ometer, however, is nothing compared to the useful piece of office equipment my Gran saw fit to furnish me with. (And do you know that Microsoft Word doesn’t recognise ‘Gran’ as a word? There are some seriously worrying gaps in this programme’s vocabulary.) The piece of office equipment to which I refer is, of course, a Personal Hand Shredder.
Obviously, there are several potential meanings to this phrase. The first and most immediately appealing meaning is that it’s something you shred your hands with. Sadly, on closer inspection, it turns out to be nothing of the kind. The second possible meaning is that it’s your own personal version of Shredder from Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, which I have to say could be really quite cool. Unfortunately, it’s not this either. The Personal Hand Shredder turns out to have the most mundane possible meaning: it’s a shredder for paper, which is operated by hand.
Now, okay, I will admit that electrical shredders are quite cool. There’s one in Nottingham Library which on occasion I am given the opportunity of using, and it’s fun flirting with danger using the thing, given that it sucks the paper into itself so fast that there’s a very real possibility it might take your arm with it, and that is something you’d really not want to happen (unless, of course, your role model is Captain Hook).
But a Personal Hand Shredder contains none of this element of danger, unless you’re deeply stupid, in which case your relatives should know better than to present you with one of the things. (Of course, a case could be made for suggesting that your relatives should know better than to present you with one anyway, but that’s beside the point.) Because, you see, with a Personal Hand Shredder, paper is only shredded when you turn the handle, so you’d have to actually insert your hand into the machine and then turn the handle, and I don’t think there are many people with the fatal combination of brains that small and hands that thin to actually do this.
Now we’ve discussed how unexciting the Personal Hand Shredder is in the danger stakes, we’ll talk about what it’s actually for. Now, there is, of course, an obvious answer to this question. It’s for shredding things, specifically pieces of paper and not hands. But – outside of my job in Nottingham Library – I have never needed to shred anything in my life. When she gave it to me, my Gran suggested that I use it for shredding “all those love letters”. Now, were I ever to receive such a thing, I think the last thing I’d do with it is shred it. I’d keep it, most probably, under lock and key. The concept is rendered even more pointless by the discovery that the Personal Hand Shredder is incapable of shredding A4 size paper, which, incidentally, is the only size paper I ever use. Therefore, in order to use the Personal Hand Shredder, I would have to rip each sheet in half first – and once I’d started shredding it in this fashion, there would be little point in continuing shredding it in a different way, now, would there?
I think that’s about all I’ve got to say about the Personal Hand Shredder. Yet, useless as it may be, it was still not the most pointless present I received at Christmas. That honour goes to a CD my dad gave me: StarTrax Karaoke: The Songs of S Club 7. I mean, does my dad genuinely think that I’m ever, ever going to even play this CD, let alone actually sing karaoke to it? Or was he just taking the piss?
Hmm. Not too difficult to answer that, is it? My dad never takes the piss.