Just occasionally, a piece of spam comes along that's not really spam. It's serving a purpose for somebody, somewhere, except it's gone astray, reached your inbox, and sits there offering a tantalising glimpse into strange new worlds.

For reasons beyond my ken, I find myself subscribed to the mailing list for an auctioneer of second-hand food processing equipment. I haven't a clue how, but when the emails arrive they make sensational reading.

Today I was delighted to receive an email from the auctioneer, advertising what they claim is "without doubt the most exciting auction of food processing equipment ever to come to the market". Well, when you put it like that, it would be rude not to look. And what do you know, all this could be mine:

It turns out that no less than Bernard Matthews has decided to have a bit of a clear-out, getting rid of plenty of second-hand stock, but also - gasp - some brand new stuff that's never been used. If you're in the poultry and snacks mass production industry, this presumably is some sort of nirvana.

Here's what you could be going home with:

• Ishida multi-head weigher with bucket elevator (shown above!), feeding on to MultiVac 530 thermoformer
• Urschel M slicer dicer, unused
• Rademaker pastry line suitable for Salmon en croute
• Townsend Supermatic RT6 with hanking unit
• Cryovac shrink tunnels
• Septomatic meat recovery machine
• Continuous nitrogen screw auger for free-flow mince
• Much, much more

The list reads like a page of a Wallace & Gromit script. "Gromiiit! Turn off the Townsend Supermatic! It's the wrong shrink tunnel!"

And who wants to eat anything that's been within five hundred yards of a Septomatic meat recovery machine?

I got one of these emails for the contents of a kebab van the other week and I'm telling you, PETA ought to publicise these things. You try going near a doner meat and chips after reading up on the prerequisite machinery.

God bless them, the machines they're flogging might be used to prepare spam, but their emails are anything but. They've put a little "unsubscribe" link in at the bottom, but I'm damned if I'm using it. This is my only chance at losing weight!

Want to see what the Septomatic looks like? Inspect the continuous nitrogen screw auger for yourself? Download the PDF of the sale catalogue (a whopping, but well worth it, 6mb) by clicking here.

By the way - what is "hanking"? Entries on a postcard (or indeed in the comments) please. What's hanking, what does a Septomatic do, and why would I need a shrink tunnel?