Lockdown leading us to hide in the loo!

A new survey has found that almost half of us have at some point hidden from other household members during lockdown.  And of all the places to hide, the loo is by far the most popular with 40% of us lurking there!

Commissioned by the author of “The Becket list – an A to Z of First World Problems”, the survey also reveals that over a third of us keep books in our “loo library”, which is where author Henry Becket fully expects his book to end up.

“A bit like this survey, it’s full of snippets of useless, hopefully entertaining information,” he says, which is born out by the dozens of favourable reviews since it came out last October.  “Perfect for the occasion. Mind you, it competes for attention with our mobiles:  it turns out that over three-quarters of us take out phones into the smallest room, and like as not use them while we’re in there!”

Apparently, many of us read something while we’re in there…including some who have even resorted to examining the ingredients list on the toilet cleaner.  Which presumably helps to explain why almost half of us think our ‘other halves’ spend too long in the lav….

Questionable children’s names

So a couple of thousand years or so of human history hasn’t given you choice enough?! I mean Kyrie, for God’s sake?! And Zak. And Trixiebell. And Dwane, Shane and Wayne. And children named after the places in which they were conceived, though I’d make a special exception for ‘Bikeshed’, as in ‘Let me introduce you to my good friend Bikeshed Brown.’ And then the parents have the nerve to refer to these as Christian names! I don’t think so.

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Illustration by Tony Husband
Illustration by Tony Husband

Unnecessary signs

‘Beware. Pickpockets operate in this area.’ Look – if you know that, why not just remove the pickpockets, and then you can remove the sign. Only a few million left to go, then. If signs have the potential for amusement (e.g. ‘Slippery when wet’) then a few could be left dotted about as a morale-booster. 

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The Proms

A series of sometimes really quite good performances of classical music, that used to be given solely in the Royal Albert Hall, but which now bizarrely seems to extend to all sorts of content in all sorts of venues. Whatever,every performance, sadly, is marred by the embarrassing behaviour of ‘promenaders’, the majority of whom, self-evidently, are only there to flaunt their ‘amusing’ character defects.

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Overused/over-hyped descriptions

No, sorry, it’s not AWESOME!!!!!! It’s merely alright. And it’s unlikely to be AMAZING, either. Or FANTASTIC or WORLD-CLASS or any of the other PHENOMENALLY inappropriate superlatives in current-day usage. Our language is being drastically debased – oh, alright, slightly undermined – by the needless desire to ‘big everything’ up.  

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On a journey

Around the world in eighty days.The pretty much inevitable traffic jam between junctions 10 and 14 of the M25. The long- drawn-out development of a business plan that isn’t complete sh1t. Only two of these activities could sensibly come under the heading of ‘on a journey’. Your voyage to self-discovery, for example, is no more a journey than it is a voyage: it’s merely an indulgence.

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Musty-smelling hotels

There’s a unique odour to the third-rate hotels sector that should make you do a 180-degree turn and head for the exit the moment you encounter it as you step over the threshold of such an establishment. I’ve never been able to work out what it is, but the formula is likely to include aged carpet, poorly functioning vacuum-cleaners, ancient breakfasts, travelling salesmen’s socks, rough concierge’s B.O. and other smells too vile to contemplate…

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Merlot

Girly grape type which is sadly increasingly included by winemakers in their products to make proper red wines more ‘approachable’. If wines weren’t so soft and ‘easy-drinking’, maybe people wouldn’t drink them in quite such absurdly large quantities…our town centres wouldn’t be quite so vile in the evening…and our casualty centres less pressurised.

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Lazy dog owners

I’ve had dogs for decades, yet I am as averse to the mess they can leave behind as much as the most fastidious of pet-haters. It’s simple: if your dog performs in public, clear the bloody stuff up! And make it easier on yourself by feeding the mutt on dry dogfood not slops, and certainly not anything containing prunes, grapes or muesli.

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