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Germans have certainly been big with computers into cars! They are reaping a pretty unpleasant harvest now, thanks to some of their more imaginative uses of software for diesel engines - or at least VW certainly is! Have you ever read an essay called "Farewell to Model T" by E.B. White? A dazzling essay - he was one of The New Yorker's greatest ever writers and a stylist par excellence. He was writing (quite a few years ago, obviously) about the changes that were becoming noticeable even then in making it harder and harder for people to maintain and repair their own automobiles, and lamenting this drive to greater and greater complexity, seemingly for complexity's sake. It's a great essay, available in a slender hardback. He was, by the way, also the author of Charlotte's Web and one of the greatest ever little guidebooks on writing - Elements of Style. To say nothing of many brilliant articles in The New Yorker.

Looks like the taps have "walked" meaning despite me telling the landlord I would dispose of the 'evidence' he has removed them anyway. I spoke to him a number of times today, but didn't get past cooker/freezer deliveries, bed sizes and what might be the best approach to replace the carcass wrecked by the worktop installer. ('Kitchen fitter' seems an inappropriate title given how much slight of hand work I am doing to cover the mess <literally and metaphorically> he left behind.) Taps didn't get anywhere close to the agenda. What doesn't help is him thinking I'm telepathic. Missing out salient bits of the conversation either insisting he didn't miss out whole phrases or suggesting I should be smart enough to know why he didn't mention the missing bits ... ie I should be able to work it out .... The last time I saw the taps, early Sunday morning, I dug my nail into the goo. Now, those taps had wear and tear commensurate with 10 years use at least, and knowing this fella hadn't changed the carpet in two rooms for the better part of 20 years, I suspect those taps were even older. The goo was quite likely as old. I would defy any oil based product to not dry out in a constantly warm environment, in 10-15 years. I would even go so far as to say, an open container with liquid oil in it, would likely dry out over that sort or period in a constantly warm environment. Even proper (window) putty dries out, hardens and cracks so has to be renewed every 10 years or so? While the goo around the waste connections (threads) was hard enough to prevent the trap parting with the waste, the residue around the non-rotating tap tail that was inside the basin tap hole, was still soft enough for me to dig a lump out with my finger-nail. It was certainly more malleable than a product that is supposed to harden, would be after 10+ years. I think the goo was to prevent water seepage, and any assistance it gave (by drying out) to help prevent tap rotation, was a bonus. As for the Bosch dishwasher .... Was it not the Germans who introduced computers into cars, that (at the time) needed a VW garage with suitable VW software, to work out what a flashing light on the dash meant? Even now, where a smart phone with blue tooth could be used by the owner to read the error logs or incident logs of the management system, the manufacturers have it so a visit to their franchised garage provides the garage with an error code, that can then be transpose with the use of the makers technical manual. Keeps people employed? And main dealer charges high. More than 10 years ago I bought a new Clio. (Worst purchasing decision of my life.) 4 months after I bought it, a headlight bulb blew. I bought a bulb, expecting it to be a simple operation.... Not so.... I couldn't see how to do it. as the car was so young, I thought I'd try to eke some goodwill from the garage. So I rang up to enquire what the procedure was. Service department were very happy to tell me the routine. It started with dropping the front bumper, withdrawing the headlight fitting and then accessing the bulb. While Renault "book time" was an hour, he offered to do the job and only charge for 30 minutes, but that would still leave me with a bill of £60+. I said I'd think about it. Eventually I worked out how to do it in under 10 minutes. (The result of cheap bulbs and newly installed speed bumps on the road away from our cul-de-sac.) You had to stand with your back to the car, almost sitting on the front valence, it was the best position to change the bulb unless you were blessed/cursed with double jointed wrists. The worrying aspect of this really, is that Renault has a work procedure that involves tools, for changing a headlight bulb. Who thought that was a good idea? Sounds like Bosch employs the same principle. Make the job awkward enough so that only trained franchised employees are likely to get the fitting job,

Freddy: if the basin taps were set in glazier's putty, now fully hardened, I doubt you would detect any significant linseed oil smell unless you warmed the putty up. Plumbers Mait, on the other hand, has and retains a fairly distinct smell. But it could have been PM used, although it would scarcely contain the movement of a tap in the hole, as distinct from giving a seal round the tap stem. I await with bated breath the results of your forensic examination ... It's been a rather frustrating DIY time here at home this weekend. I had to replace an increasingly unreliable semi-integrated dishwasher and chose a mid-range Bosch. Leaving aside the extra work needed to jack-up the new machine (blocks of wood as well as the screw-down feet) because Herr Bosch seems to think that all worktops are somewhat lower than I have normally 'encountered' (pun unintended until just then), the actual preparation and installation of the machine was something of a protracted and complex process, although I had no problems with the existing plumbing (water or waste) and electric connections. As seems increasingly common, the 'orders which must be obeyed' (aka 'instructions') were in the form of a pictogram with almost no words (English or otherwise). In other words, neat but by no means crystal clear drawings which are intended to be understood by anyone from Dublin to Damascus (via Dundee, D'Avignon and Dalaman) but in practice are intelligible to almost no-one - except perhaps the proverbial four-year-old boy (who, alas, was not to hand). And the various tools required (including Torx drivers) are not immediately apparent, although my workshop had them all 'in stock'. Quite a lot of head-scratching and profanity was involved before I got the thing installed and, after further wrestling with 'operational orders' - in English of a sort but again accompanied by dubious drawings, performing an initial wash-up to the satisfaction of my customer (i.e. SWMBO). I did not have the same problems with either of the previous dishwashers - a new Baumatic followed by a secondhand (but almost new) Indesit, the latter being without any instructions. However good and reliable the Bosch proves to be, I was not impressed with the preliminaries. I strongly suspect that the average householder, however keen and basically competent, would struggle with a like-for-like replacement (as in my case) needing no external plumbing or electrical work - and would likely give up altogether if it was a new installation. Perhaps that is the intention: 'tis the duty of the common man to make work for the artisan'. I don't think the pictogram problems etc are unique to German products as I had similar issues when installing some Velux sun tunnels a while ago. On the other hand, my VW car has a comprehensive but not always comprehensible manual that has still, after some eight years of ownership, failed to acquaint me fully with all the mysteries of what I consider an over-sophisticated piece of automotive engineering - and one which is by no means user-friendly when what should be straightforward tasks (e.g. replacing a blown bulb, let alone a headlamp unit) need to be tackled at home. All part of life's steep (and potentially expensive) learning-curve, I guess ...