And do you think the manufacturer might have supplied a simple instruction sheet telling me how to bolt it all together? No. Every piece had its own awful instructions but as far as the manufacturer was concerned, each item was on its own.

So I phoned my dear computer guru Jason and booked him to come over the next day and sort it out, despite him telling me it was easy and I could do it myself.

"Just read the instructions," he said.

"I can't understand the ****ing instructions," I shouted back down the phone. "You come and do it, I'll watch what you do, then I'll write it down and send the text to the manufacturers with an invoice for my time. At least that way poor so-and-sos who buy this kit in the future will find out how to get it working without having a nervous breakdown."

There's one very strong point that emerges from this true story. When people read, listen to or watch a set of instructions, they often do it in fairly stressful circumstances, in uncomfortable surroundings, in poor light, etc. Accessibility, simplicity, visibility, and clarity are vital.

People who buy products that require instructions, need to know how to use the product as easily as possible. And because many people are technodorks like me, instructions need to be understood by the lowest common denominator.

Logically then, you might think, the best person to write instructions for technodorks like me is someone who knows every last detail about the product, how it was made, how it works, what it does, and what its inside leg measurement is. In other words, an expert. This could not be further from the truth.

Instructions should never be written by experts, because they know too much. What this means is that they are very prone to making the mistake of assuming the reader knows a little bit about the subject matter already. To an expert, the fact that before you begin assembling the bookcase you need to align sections A, B and C with each other may be so blindingly obvious it's not even worth mentioning. To someone like me it's not just worth mentioning, it's absolutely essential if I'm not to spend the next three hours wondering why on earth I can't find any bolt holes that line up.