THE NESTLE 3000 BREAKS DOWN

The Nestle 3000 is broken. Apparently, one of the engineers (our software engineers, that is) tried to take it apart and fix it. The front of the machine is swinging open, revealing a complex network of tubes and pipes, coffee resevoirs and cabling.

Well what were you expecting, Stubbsy? A tiny hamster grinding coffee beans with a pestle and mortar?

It looked a bit like the outside of the Matrix. I imagined coffee-sludge slurping down the grubby brown tubes and hot milk coursing through the white one.

The other snaking pipe inside the machine was of course, for hot chocolate - and it seemed to be caked in the stuff. I traced it back to the choco pot, which was half full of flaky bits of dandruff powder. I made a mental note never to use the Nestle 3000 for choco-milk again.

Funny isn't it, how we don't think about what goes on inside the machine? Like chimpanzees in a science lab, we just hop along to the Nestle 3000, press the magic button, watch the pretty lights as the mug fills with slurry and then bounce away, back to our spinny chairs.

Yet deep inside the bowels of the Nestle 3000, there's a row of canisters of synthetic coffee, milk and dandruff, electronic circuits and plastic tubing you wouldn't want anywhere near your beverage.

There are other machines out there, aren't there? There's the machine that hands you money if you feed it with your plastic key and thump the right set of buttons. What goes on behind that one? Then there's the machine that lets you chat to your friends but secretly records valuable information about you to sell on to the highest bidder. Another machine uses old-fashioned mystery and magic to turn farmyard animals into rows of shrink-wrapped packages on a shelf in Tesco. And what about the machine that makes you your luxury trainers using children who can't afford an education, let alone a pair of shoes?

I'm straying into the world of Carlos the Liberator here, but it is interesting to me how we don't tend to think about the processes that go on in a place where we can't see them - the great machines we use every day. Out of sight, out of mind. Press the button, watch the lights, slurp the coffee.

This being a room of engineers of course, the mood is... decaffeinated. Mr Three Espressos is having to scoop spoon after spoon of Nescafé gold blend into a mug and then slop in kettle-boiled scaly water. There are a few drained faces around. I myself, have returned to my spinny chair to ponder it all. You won't catch me moaning about the Nestle 3000, I think to myself, while scratching my head and eating a breakfast banana.