'Toast rack'; grrrrrrrrrrrr. What an awful name for a column. It was supposed to fit in with a theme for these pages, each column name reflecting something you might do on a lazy Sunday morning (Diaspora diaries was originally known as Long-distance call). However, few readers realised that, so you have been left with a column named after a piece of tableware.

Words should have meaning, but all too often that gets forgotten in the pursuit of a 'look'; in everything from advertising copy to brochures and (other) magazines, senseless sentences and trite turns of phrase get thrust into the spaces between pretty pictures - almost as an afterthought. In other cases - perhaps because time was tight - it appears as though the writer gave up before alighting on precisely the right word.

Next week, that is changing, at least as far as Toast rack is concerned. Oh, don't worry; we will still be moaning about things, but we're now going to do so under the column name 'Salt-cellar' ... or is it, 'Chopsticks holder'? No, that would be stupid!