I have always laughed at those who read the instructions.

How much time could I have saved, and what handy things could I have done, if I had actually read the manuals for all my gadgets?

A long time ago, I went to a friend’s wedding at which the best man made an amusing observation about the groom. He said he was the kind of man who, upon buying a computer or food processor or some such apparatus, would sit down and read the manual cover to cover before he’d got the machine out of the box. How I laughed, because I’m totally the opposite. But the joke’s on me.

Until recently, I drove an estate car with a really useful feature. Instead of opening the tailgate fully, you could just flip open the back window for easy access. Nice. Hardly life-changing, but nice. The unfortunate thing was that, having driven the car for three years, it was only on the day I took it back to the dealership where the dealer checked the car over that I learned about the feature. Ooh, I said, as she popped it open, I never knew it could do that.