Your Views

Keep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions.

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Your e-Mails

David Beaumont	I actually one of these people who thinks quite a lot about the designs of things and it constantly amazes me how bad kettles and teapots can be. As far as kettles go, we've seen ones where the vents let the stream out onto your hand and ones which tend to slurp hot water everywhere when you pour from them. Teapots seem equally poorly designed most of the time, it's all style over function. Most of them are either far too small or have a spout that either dribbles horribly or is so narrow that if the teapot is full, you can't pour the tea without it coming out of the lid first. The best designed kettle I've come across is the Tefal Vitesse 1.7L. The flat element means no scale, it boils in about 1/2 the time of most kettles and it doesn't dribble at all. It has a simple auto-switch off feature when you lift it from the base and doesn't take ages to slot it back onto the connection. Quite simply 10/10 for proper functional design. As for teapots, we currently have a £3.99 one from Woolworths (although whilst is doesn't drip, it slurps tea everywhere if you swish it around). We are still on the look out for a good teapot though. So, I guess what I'm saying is, why not have a league table of best/worst teapots and/or kettles. Let people submit reviews and rate them. Maybe that way I'd eventually find a teapot that isn't naff! Great site, keep up the good work! David.
	Nicey replies: David, I expect you're right. Of course a really well designed website would probably have a kettle/teapot voting and rating engine with dynamic kettle point allocation. Alas on ours you just have to trawl through stacks of seemingly random emails from people banging on about what they like and don't like. In fact you'll probably need two cuppas just to get through it all, and 3 or 4 biccys. Still, at least there is a kettle icon, we didn't even have one of those until recently. Still come the new year maybe we'll kick off "Functional teapot" month.
Biscuit man!	Just looking at your Jammie Dodgers poll, the “bring back the old ones” is winning hands down. But which ‘old ones’? The product has gone through several Doctor Who-style regenerations, of which the most radical was turning the bottom biscuit up-side down (or right-way up depending how you look at it). Up until the early 1980’s, the base biscuit was presented with the flat ‘underside’ facing up, so that the overall profile was a pleasing oval nature. A bit like the classic flying saucer shape. Then the jam was changed from a hard viscous dollop to a softer, more user-friendly variety. However, this made them much more difficult to make as the softer jam didn’t set so quickly and tended to run off the flat surface of the biscuit in a messy non-user-friendly way. The solution was to flip the base biscuit over and mould the top surface so that it had a shallow bowl, guarded by a ring of decorative but unseen embossings. This meant that the pleasing oval profile was no longer achievable, but at least the consumer got a nice soft jam that didn’t leave a sticky trail between teeth and biscuit. The designs on the top biscuit (a variety of cut-out shapes including a celtic cross) were also dropped in favour of a having a heart-shaped hole on every biscuit.
Rich	Hello Nicey, wifey, and the junior staff members. I'm having a bit of a mare with my kettle as it goes... can't remember what make it is, a new one c. 4 months old, chrome look, round base... but it's got a nasty habit of not turning itself off when filled to just below (or above) the fill line... it overflows into the stand which is pretty dangerous in itself and proceeds to turn my kitchen into something resembling a Finnish sauna... Needless to say, it will be replaced in the very near future! Keep up the thirst-quenching work... Rich
	Nicey replies: Thats all wrong isn't it.
Tomsk	Doughnuts Excellent piece of research by POST CTI Technical Support Team into supermarket doughnuts, but what about the poor independent baker, struggling in high streets abandoned for "retail parks" by larger firms? The best doughnuts in the world (according to a scientific survey of one person, me) come from Beaney's bakery under the railway arches in Strood, Kent. On the other hand, a bakery that shall remain nameless (by the bus station in Rotherham) had no jam doughnuts at all. What's that all about? Call yourself a baker's? Is there a public transport and bakeries theme developing here? Oh dear, rambling now Cheerio, Tomsk
Biscuit Man	Maybe this is why vending machine coffee tastes awful…… 1. CLICK ON THE LINK 2. MOVE YOUR POINTER TO THE COIN SLOT, & PUT THE COIN IN THE VENDING MACHINE 3. CLICK ON A BUTTON TO CHOOSE YOUR DRINK 4. CLICK ON THE CUP WHEN IT IS READY. 5. AND LAST... CLICK ON THE WORD "APRI" ENJOY! Don't forget to click on "APRI"
	Nicey replies: I'm not sure if I feel closer to the Italians or somehow distanced by that. Mind you its been a long time since I had a vending machine cup of coffee.
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