Back home in Adelaide, on the bookshelves of my youth, under the gathering dust forming a grey barrier across everything, sit dutifully many books – suitably appropriate for a book-shelf – yearning for the days of my youth when they were loved and opened and read and shared their words and pictures with a young mind, eager to learn and more eager to let his mind go wild as the words on the page were gleefully transformed by his imagination.

One of those books on the shelf, in between the series of Little Golden Books, Garfield comics and treasured favourites such as Mem Fox’s Sail Away, sat a large illustrated book detailing the major inventions throughout history. I did like this book, for the fact it was large and colourful, but more so, it summarised how the last century has rapidly seen a vast many new inventions.

This reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons, where Homer decides he wants to follow in the steps of Thomas Edison and be an inventor. Struggling with ideas on what to invent, it is suggested that instead of Homer inventing something new, he should instead enhance an existing invention.

This is nothing new in the world of inventions. Take for example the wheel. Someone invents the circular thing and it lasts like that until another person has a wacky idea of punching a hole in the middle, placing a long stick through the hole, another wheel at the other end, a piece of board on top, connect it to a reluctant horse and suddenly a method of transport. Then someone else has a crazy idea of sending the horse off to pasture and putting an engine where normally the horse would trot and suddenly a couple of decades later we have a car. Ironically, someone then decides to meld the two concepts together by placing the horse on the board on the wheels, connected to the car and there you have it: a horse float!

Now one new invention which has intrigued me for a while is courtesy of the creative minds at the Gillette factory. For men, normally you have three choices when it comes to shaving: using a razor, using an electric razor – I miss Mr Remington, Victor Kiam and his catch phrase, “I liked it so much I bought the company” – or not shaving at all.

Back to the clever part: no doubt years and years of market research by Gillette showed a noticeable trend by men wanting to use an electric razor, but preferring the agility of a normal blade. I mean there already exists electric razors that could be used wet or dry – lets hope the instructions clearly state unplug before rinsing under water. So now we have the battery powered razor. Which, I notice the marketing genius doesn’t stop there. Add pink and suddenly women also are including in the blissful world of even closer shaves.

Now, I don’t wish to cast nasturtiums - hydrangeas, daisies, tulips or any other common garden variety plant – neither do I want to cast aspersions on the wonderful melding of razor and electricity, however, this concept scares me.

At the best of times, when my alarm clock greets me with the loud buzzing drone that reminds me a whole day lies ahead and as I throw myself out of bed and trundle into a hot shower, then walk out again to remove articles of clothing that perhaps I should have removed before entering the shower, I realise I’m often still in the process of waking up.

Normally a hot shower aids in the wake-up. However, sometimes I am still a little drunk with sleep as I pick up my razor to shave in the morning. Therefore, is it really wise of me to have a razor that, at the touch of a button and courtesy of some batteries vibrates to give me the closest shave ever? More so, anything which claims to help me shave at speeds beyond Mach3 while I am clearly still tired, is possibly a hazard in the morning. I mean, what is stopping it hacking into my cheek? Surely that isn’t the best a man can get.

My hand is not normally that steady in the early hours of the morning anyway, let alone holding a razor buzzing away like an electric toothbrush. What’s stopping me getting confused and trying to brush my teeth with it, before I realise it’s not the electric toothbrush. That said, it may save trips to the dentist for a scale and clean.

No, I’ll stick to my normal non-electric, non vibrating razor. Sure, an occasional nick here and there is expected, but the Norman Gunston look is back in, isn’t it? Otherwise, I could always bury my head in a good book so no-one notices. Now, where is my Scuffy the Tugboat book?