I’ve been singing “Oh lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz” for the last three weeks while my new car has been pimped and prepped for me to use, after eighteen months of being laid up. It’s been earworming away in my head.

When I look at the weights for my balance scales I have a different earworm – “a friend’s a friend but a pound’s a pound and things can get awful heavy”. It’s from "where’s the line between lust and love" by the musically gorgeous General Public. I love their first album almost without parallel.

What I discovered this week is that a friend may be a friend but a pound certainly isn’t a pound, at least in the world of balance scales. This 200g weight does, in fact, weigh 211g. I’ve tested it on a few other devices and they all agree. Likewise 100g weighs 106g and 50g, well, you get the picture.

So now I can dance around the kitchen singing #where’s the line between lust and love (oh oh oh show me) with gusto having proven beyond doubt that things are not always what they seem.