It's good to talk

Let's talk about Argos. The shop, not the place in Greece. I know very little about the place in Greece. Though I am sure it is lovely. If you have been there, why not drop me a line?

If you have been to Argos the shop, and bought your phone or computer there, chances are you can't drop me a line because it's probably fucked.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Argos. I like the idea that everything you could possibly want to buy is all in one place. It's genius. And magical that they have so much stuff in a tiny little shop. I reckon they've probably got a very big shrink-wrapper to store all that stuff there, but that's a separate issue.

Everything I have ever bought from Argos is bollocksed. Here:

• Sofa bed which is impressively uncomfortable as a sofa and as a bed, and came with Part C missing.
• Kettle where the lid doesn't shut properly
• Vacuum that doesn't suck. Well, it did, just not literally.
• Toaster that doesn't pop up properly
• Food processor that takes 15 minutes to assemble - and then fails to grate the cheese
• The saga of the shower radio (don't ask)
• The digital cordless phone which would cut my parents off every ten minutes. No-one else, just my parents. Like a built-in feature.

It was this latest purchase that caused me to return said phone to the store. They didn't want to refund me because I'd had it more than a month, even though it was faulty. They offered me a replacement. I said that I'd like a refund. They refused. We had an argument. I won. They refunded me... but then I felt that I couldn't really come back to the till and order another phone. So I left.

And then I realised that I genuinely couldn't think of another place where I could buy a cordless landline from. Well, there was a bloke selling them on Bethnal Green High Street, but I wasn't sure that was a brilliant idea. Argos have seeped into my consciousness on such a fundamental level, I honestly couldn't imagine where else one might purchase a phone from. It's like when I lived in Bristol and needed a lightbulb, and discovered (back then) they didn't have a Wilkos. I had no idea where else one could buy lightbulbs. It was a confusing time.

Luckily, for the phone issue, Mrs Nunn suggested Currys, which is walking distance from here. Technically I'm still boycotting Currys from the Coalville CD player incident from 1999, but perhaps it is time to move on.