Videotape and French eBay

Can't remember if I mentioned this before but if I did here it is again anyway. My main project at the archive at the moment is transferring some 1/2" EIAJ open-reel videotapes that have lost their lubricant. To get them to play requires a process involving cleaning, re-lubricating and then transferring. I had three tapes ready and waiting to be transferred today. The first two were fine. The third had a thin band of noise in the lower quarter of the picture. One or two tapes I've done have had this problem and I have found a way to mask it- hold your (clean!) finger on the tape very gently just above where it touches the head. In theory one could rig up some kind of pressure pad to do this but since I REALLY can't be bothered I use my finger. The thing is after twenty minutes or so one's arm feels about ready to drop off. Thankfully these are half hour tapes and one grits one's teeth and gets on with it- I'd hate to have to do it for one of the hour long tapes though! But why couldn't life be a bit simpler and this not be necessary? The other two tapes played OK as have the majority of the tapes I've done, why do one or two have to be just that little bit extra awkward? It's bad enough one has to relubricate the damn things in the first place!

So just now I did what I so frequently do and popped over to French eBay to check for rare 9.5/17.5/28mm projectors. I won't detail my exact search terms since I've already given away a trade secret by telling you I do this and if you don't do this already and collect these things you're probably thinking 'Hey that's a good idea, I'll do that!' Since this increases my already sizeable competition you can find your own damn projectors! However I will say I always select "Enchères & Achat Immédiat" because Petites Annonces is about as much use as a chocolate 200B. Until today Enchères & Achat Immédiat was on the far left of the search box and from habit I selected the far left option. As of today that is now the new category "Tout eBay" and Enchères & Achat Immédiat is in the middle. The work of seconds to change category but again just one of those irritating little niggles that makes life such a pain in the posterior. Why couldn't they put the new category in the middle or on the right? Why couldn't that third tape play without a noise bar? Why couldn't the N1500 tape I finally found play more than a minute or so without clogging up the heads in a pretty big way? I'll tell you why:

Nothing's ever f**king easy!