Fiddly

The buttons on the tiny mobile phone were too fiddly.

Today around 90 percent of people use Zawgyi instead of Unicode. Incompatible without fiddly plug-ins, it only allows people to communicate in Burmese with other Zawgyi users, excluding the nation’s minority languages. Its clunkiness also means search functions do not work, crippling data storage systems.

See, Barbados, like certain other fiddly little islands— Antigua, Saint Lucia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, Great Britain, Australia— is filled with a genus of hotspurs fiercely dedicated to motoring on the wrong side of the road.

But the draping roses, and the double bell of dress and overskirt — fiddly, too bloody fiddly!

Plate after plate of fiddly Lebanese mezes that tasted of lemon and breadcrumbs and chopped coriander rather than the tidbits of lamb and beef and prawns that they covered, the whole tedious meal made only bearable by a very creditable Château Musar.

The cover, which was also the title page, promised an exhaustive collection of lists, tables, “extraordinary matches” and “other interesting information”, but the most cursory flick-through revealed only a sequence of cricket scorecards and a summary of the game's already fiddly laws.

I can divide my movements into two types: gross motor and fine motor (in other words, large movements and small, fiddly movements) and, as I have already described, I have far more problems with the latter than the former.

Because benefit dependence was understood to confine people to poverty ('bend the rules - you've got to in this world cause of the pittance you get off the government') and because doing fiddly work indicated a commitment to self-reliance ('at least they're working') it was widely condoned.