For an amateur micro-electrician I struggle to find the parts that I need for my electronics. Recently, Dave and myself have been working on a Digital Synth, and our abilities have been foiled by the terrible status of Maplins.

To buy over the counter parts in Norwich, we're really limited - we have two Maplins. The website says that there is a particular item, that there are 5 of them at both of the stores. When we visit the said store, they tell us the items been discontinued and there arn't any such items anywhere in the region or head office.

So now we're doing a mail delivery order from RS - 4*£0.50 items and then £5 pnp. I dont mind this - apart from if I had known on wednesday that this would be the case, we would have done all our purchases this way, and have had them all ready to go for our build session yesterday.

Not. A. Happy. Bunny. Damn you Maplins. Damn you and your stupid online stock system.