The High Court has ruled that a grapefruit knife is a "knife" (surprising that) and that it may not be sold to minors. This is a proper and excellent decision. A great deal of damage can be done with such things, and indeed it is time that a number of other so-called "kitchen gadgets", which are innocently marketed but have sinister possibilities, were restricted.

I believe that melon scoops are already tightly controlled following a nasty incident in 2008 in Huddersfield, but absolutely no action whatsoever has followed the wholesale abuse of tin openers in fighting between rival gangs in rural Dorset in the summer. We have to stop the spread of these things.

If young people are allowed to get their hands on salad spinners and - heaven forbid - silicone pastry brushes, we will see a wholesale breakdown in law and order. Kitchen shops should be licenced and closed to under 21s, and their window displays obscured with masking tape so as not to tempt youths in with the dubious lure of glamorous weaponry such as pasta machines or cheese domes.

Digital Voice Recognition

Having just invested in some new dictation machines, I was interested to see that they came with a "free" copy of Dragon software.

I thought it might be useful to send a text version of my dictation down with the file, and so, after spending 15 minutes acclimatising my voice to the software, I tried it out on a short tape.

The result:

"At 76 nights at the right answer is that organisms a dumb visit our thoughts needed to attract the is being shown a red Anne and I did not the red on black it is quite clear what of the included the California Corriveau as soon as possible to build onto Borrego Dir jar jar to take 20 September (octagon per amp out by the readers of £7000 as a premium for ham and cheese extension and I get them to do together with our part great show delivery and about whether they can investigate a title and factors in making these emissions middle of the garden as handsets under pounds for the conveyancing and the like back and are reasonably certain that at this stage only copy entries etc and Anne and Anne and November and)

This is the exact opposite is no home preferably within the next fortnight. God frontier for eighth of all that hot brown cities as we e-mail you a revised transfer dedicate some this is not right wing to the photography with the removing to the growth of the transfer do want them to fulfil until it right through no 15th electorate they are total September week we return the documents the last one apologised for not sending them in a last letter. Yours"

It's more James Joyce than Edward Lear, I suppose..

I particularly like the ham and cheese extension - so post-modernist Hänsel und Gretel.