No, no, no - not that! (Room 101)

Member Name: The Operator

Product:	Room 101
Date:	21/03/02 (199 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ho

Disadvantages: Hum

I can't believe this. I'm writing in Speakers Corner which is something I don't do very often at all. The thing is, everyone's writing a 101 thing and I really don't want to be left out. The other thing is - I've not read any of the others. I'm a bit precious like that; I don't want to be swayed by other opinions and copy. It's all my own work, mate and sorry if I repeat anything anyone else has written. So what do I dislike enough to consign to eternal anonymity? Nothing particularly original but I hate 'em all the same. If I think of anything else I'll add an update. Maybe not though, no-one would read it.

Number one. It's a colour and I hate it. Not just dislike, I hate this colour with a passion only surpassed by my loathing of a certain person in this list. The colour is pink. Popular in some quarters, it is to me quite simply the most revolting colour ever concocted. It's not even a colour, it's a blemish on my eyes, a foul abhorrence. It reminds of ghastly seaside tat shops and tooth-rotting rock, Barbie dolls, Barbara Cartland and a Burger King strawberry milkshake inadvisedly purchased once when full of Guinness and embarrassingly distributed post-ingestion over Charing Cross station.
The absolutely, positively worst thing about pink is that it pretends to be the colour of passion. Passion is important; passion is heat - hot coals are red, not pink. Skin isn't pink, it's all sorts - look next time - you flush red, not pink. Red is important, pink is insignificant. Stop lights are red, not pink; blood is red; the country's foremost football teams viz Manchester United and Crewe Alexandra both play in red, not pink.
Significantly though, huntsmen call their colours pink even though they're red. What are they suggesting?

Number 2 is a group thing. It's winter veg. Generally I don't agree with buying fruit and veg out of season but - and big but here - pl
ease let me have runner beans and new potatoes in winter rather than brussels sprouts and similar. Christmas dinner? Meant to be a celebration isn't it? It's a punishment. You've opened all your presents, kissed aged relatives, been nice to strangers and then you're faced with a dried up chicken type thing and tiny little concentrations of bile coloured cat ordure. Sprouts aren't food, they're an eloborate torture. Believe me I've tried to eat them but it's just not possible, that taste is like sewage and then they re-visit you several hours after ingestion to exact an even more cruel form of torture. I lived for 16 years in the shadow of a stinking rapeseed oil refinery. Rape is a brassica too, same family as sprouts. I need no reminders. Same goes for cauliflower - who in their right mind would actually eat sprout tasting plaster? Parsnips - taste ok, texture like creamed leather. Swede is bearable but only just because at best it's textured water. Best just to eat the meat and lashings of onion gravy.

3 - it's human but only just. OK, no she isn't. She's the undead; refusing to accept that her time has been and gone.
In the late 50s the voters of Dartford had the good sense to reject the young Margaret Hilda Roberts. Despite this she fell in love and married an Erith paint factory magnate while down there, a certain D. Thatcher. Thus was the legend created. She soon got elected in Finchley, district of my birth - oh the shame - and began a rise through the Tory ranks.
I'm 41. In 1972, I had my last free school milk. No more would children be entitled to free milk after that date and certainly not in secondary school. Margaret Thatcher was secretary of state for education in the Heath government and would forever be known to my generation as Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.
And then what did my generation do? Bloody elected her, that's what. In May 1979 - My first election. And then
in 1983 on a wave of jingoistic hysteria post-Falklands. And then again in '87 because the opposition fell apart through over-confidence. So why so bad then? I'll tell you - anyone who makes a virtue out of all the things which have not, repeat, have not, endeared Britain to the world over the past 200 years is seriously maladjusted. She made it possible for the most vile forms of humanity to prosper in this once great nation; those that would sell their own parents to make a buck if possible; Rupert Murdoch and his loathsome Sky organisation; a whole generation of toadying, snide and slimy politicians such as Norman Lamont, Kenneth Baker and Michael Howard and not forgetting her arch henchman, the very nasty Norman Tebbit.
She wore her anti-European Union colours as a badge of pride. OK so there may not be anything particulary wrong in that but it was seized upon by the tabloid media, whipped up and made appealing to the basest forms of British humanity - those that hate and hate anything which is different. Directly thanks to her and her inability to sense when to call her cohorts to heel, I'm treated with caution whenever I venture overseas instead of being welcomed.
Even now, when she's been out of power longer than she was in it and well into her dotage, her spirit is summoned whenever some form of arch patriotism is deemed useful to a tabloid's circulation.
I could waffle on for years about how much I loathe her but I fear you'd all tire of me so it's down the hatch with her and onwards...

4 - It's a short one. People who 'phone in to radio traffic announcers using a "handle". Why do they do this? Ah...simple. "Roadhog" or "Diesel Cowboy" and their ilk are really only trying to disguise themselves because they're scared that their mates will find out they've been listening to Radio 2 and that they have some form of social conscience by telling everyone about the
jam on the M6 at Spaghetti when actually they've been telling everyone they really only listen to old-school and garage in the wheels and don't care about anything.
Radio 2 has the best traffic reports going. Don't worry, we all listen to it sometimes.

5 - People who can't explain themselves. Don't ask me why.

6 - Do you collect things? I don't. I used to collect sensible things like coins and stamps. You knew where you were with those and everyone at school did the same except for Paul who collected rocks. One kid collected farts in a jar but I don't think he was serious about swapping.
Sadly these mundane but strangely gratifying hobbies weren't enough for some people and they started to collect oddments. Like plates and Jubilee mugs and stuff. OK - that's not too bad really. They're probably commemorating something a bit special and have a certain significance to the collector.
My Mum collects Swarowski crystal. Now we're getting somewhere - that's that horrid glass stuff supposedly crafted into animal-like forms or whatever and made to seem collectable because it costs a lot to buy. Wrong! It's vile pukey and overpriced tat. Sorry Mum. It's a poor excuse for my Dad's lack of imagination over Christmas and birthday presents. And anyway, you kept them for years under the bath so no-one could see them!
It's not finely chiselled glass that goes into 101 though - it's what came through my door this morning. It's The Franklin Mint catalogue. Oh wow! Just what I always wanted. Now I can begin serious collecting.
I think I'll start with the "St. Francis of Assisi Musical Sculpture" in bisque porcelain "selectively coated with gleaming gold" Looks lovely and at £149, it's a snip. Then I'll move on to the Lucille Ball Vinyl Portrait Doll at £125. Or the Liz Taylor as a baby one. Must have it. Got to be worth something in a few y
ears that, hasn't it? You don't think so? Bound to be someone on e-bay who'll want one soon though even though it's not a limited edition. Speaking of which - I rather fancy the "Flight of Fancy Hummingbird & Floral Sculpture" by the House of Faberge. Do you suppose it's the real Faberge? The ones that supplied the Romanovs with their little fancy easter eggies? Still it must be worth it because there's only 9500 and they're hand numbered.
The eggs? Yes, loads of them for you to collect too. They'll sit nicely alongside the official scale model of Elvis' Pink Caddy. Elvis is dead, people. He had a pink Cadillac or rather his mum did and a scale model of it is just that; a model of a car once owned by a dead singer's mum. Someone hit me, please before I get carried away.

Who buys this cack? These are not collectibles, you are robots being told by a magazine that they are desirable objets d'art and because they are expensive cack you believe they have some kind of worth. It's worthless trailer-trash art of the lowest order and yet you appear to lap it up in buckets. I used to live near the Franklin Mint warehouse which was on the A21 in Catford. This was back in the early 80s and the truckloads of poop that used to ship out of that place was phenomenal even back then. Where are our standards? What levels would we stoop to? "Coming soon, individually hand crafted in exquisite rust coloured porcelenium with selective peanut-butter colouring, a fantastic limited edition of Elvis' last motion. Limited edition of 13,500 each one numbered and with a certificate of authenticity signed by the Memphis coroner."

And you'd buy it.

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