Room 101

[smittims]

I don't know if you've done this recently. What would you send to Room 101? Here ar a few things of which the world would, I think, be well rid:

Bank Holidays: They once had a valid purpose before we had paid holidays, and some had none, but now nearly everyone has, and many work on BH's anyway. They cause confusion as to when or whether the shops will open, the roads are clogged , and millions mooch about retail parks not knowing what to do.

Security Alarms: the only people who benefit from them are those paid to manufacture and install them. To everyone else they are a nuisance, s they so often go off accidentally: to the owners, obliged to fit them for their insurance; to the police who have to investigate false alarms, and above all to the neighbours who are kept awake. I'm sure hardly anyone takes them seriously; they say 'Oh, its just an alarm going off'.

Celebrity 'novelists': writing a novel is hard work. Virginia Woolf re-wrote her first novel five times from beginning to end. And there must be many hard-working novelists enraged by some TV chef or gardening presenter being credited with creating best-sellers. For me it's a symptom of the hypocrisy of this century.

[Serial_Apologist]

Unrestricted fireworks displays (restrict them to, let's say, New Year's Eve and Diwali)

Walk-through trains with seats facing from the sides

Ocado and other house-delivery services other than for disabled

Twitter

Wheelie bins

Plastic food wrapping

Garden decking

Vuvuzelas (those hooters blasted on street demos)

Ubiquitously drab formal wear for men

Celebrity culture

TV and radio phone-ins

Most TV ads - especially with people crying on them

New Age ideologies

Self-check outs at supermarkets and shops in general

Duvets

Trainers (the shoes, that is)

Unlicensed dogs

Electric scooters

Answering machines for enquiries and complaints

Private schools

Private hospitals

Inaccessible banks

Banking charges

Amazon

Flytippers

Police brutality

Stock markets

Credit cards

Pink adjacent to orange or brown

[Bella Kemp]

Unrestricted fireworks displays (restrict them to, let's say, New Year's Eve and Diwali)

Walk-through trains with seats facing from the sides

Ocado and other house-delivery services other than for disabled

Twitter

Wheelie bins

Plastic food wrapping

Garden decking

Vuvuzelas (those hooters blasted on street demos)

Ubiquitously drab formal wear for men

Celebrity culture

TV and radio phone-ins

Most TV ads - especially with people crying on them

New Age ideologies

Self-check outs at supermarkets and shops in general

Duvets

Trainers (the shoes, that is)

Unlicensed dogs

Electric scooters

Answering machines for enquiries and complaints

Private schools

Private hospitals

Inaccessible banks

Banking charges

Amazon

Flytippers

Police brutality

Stock markets

Credit cards

Pink adjacent to orange or brown

Don't forget kitchen sinks! But actually I agree with many of these things but not wheelie bins - it must have been hellish being a dustman in the old days lugging those huge cans on your back, and how do aged householders move bins out to the front on collection day if they are not on wheels?

[Bryn]

Re #2, it started well but then ran off the rails at Wheelie bins and crashed at Duvets.

[Serial_Apologist]

Don't forget kitchen sinks! But actually I agree with many of these things but not wheelie bins - it must have been hellish being a dustman in the old days lugging those huge cans on your back, and how do aged householders move bins out to the front on collection day if they are not on wheels?

True, sister!

Mind, I do enjoy a good kitchen sink drama.

Do you have any choice dislikes?

[Serial_Apologist]

Re #2, it started well but then ran off the rails at Wheelie bins and crashed at Duvets.

So I don't enjoy your blanket approval then! At least I offered a soft landing.

[teamsaint]

Unrestricted fireworks displays (restrict them to, let's say, New Year's Eve and Diwali)

Walk-through trains with seats facing from the sides

Ocado and other house-delivery services other than for disabled

Twitter

Wheelie bins

Plastic food wrapping

Garden decking

Vuvuzelas (those hooters blasted on street demos)

Ubiquitously drab formal wear for men

Celebrity culture

TV and radio phone-ins

Most TV ads - especially with people crying on them

New Age ideologies

Self-check outs at supermarkets and shops in general

Duvets

Trainers (the shoes, that is)

Unlicensed dogs

Electric scooters

Answering machines for enquiries and complaints

Private schools

Private hospitals

Inaccessible banks

Banking charges

Amazon

Flytippers

Police brutality

Stock markets

Credit cards

Pink adjacent to orange or brown

You might need to put some shelving up, or see if room 102 is free , S-A !

[Joseph K]

Leather jackets

Combination of wind, rain and warm-ish temperature

Adverts

Litter

[LHC]

Shadily funded think tanks based in Tufton Street

[Serial_Apologist]

Shadily funded think tanks based in Tufton Street

Neo Tech architecture (eg Lloyds of London HQ; Pompidou Centre in Paris)

Techno

Damien Hirst

[Bella Kemp]

True, sister!

Mind, I do enjoy a good kitchen sink drama.

Do you have any choice dislikes?

Smart new theatres when the old ones were so much more atmospheric and magical.
Ironically, what I do miss is John Reed as Koko - fond memories of being taken on foggy nights to the old Sadlers Wells by my parents.

[smittims]

Thanks for these. Serialapologist's compendious reply reminded me of a poem by Amis:

German tourists, plastic roses,
Sculptures made from wire or lead:
Each of them a sight more comely
Than the screens around your bed.

[gradus]

Every office block in the City of London built in the last 20 years. The tall blocks of flats in East London built and continuing to be built since the 2012 Olympics. What has happened to the profession of Architecture that it produces such inhuman buildings?

[Serial_Apologist]

Smart new theatres when the old ones were so much more atmospheric and magical.
Ironically, what I do miss is John Reed as Koko - fond memories of being taken on foggy nights to the old Sadlers Wells by my parents.

Oh my goodness! The one occasion I went to Sadlers Wells was by courtesy of my parents at age 11, to see "Hansel & Gretel" as a way of being "introduced to opera"!. It put me off going from at time henceforth; opera is my least favourite among "classical sub-genres", though I can listen to some modern manifestations of it.

[Serial_Apologist]

Every office block in the City of London built in the last 20 years. The tall blocks of flats in East London built and continuing to be built since the 2012 Olympics. What has happened to the profession of Architecture that it produces such inhuman buildings?

How I agree! My particular bête noir* is the so-called "walkie talkie", which looms menacingly in its misplacement, totally out of place. Very tall modernist buildings at all angles can evoke a panicky sensation of vertigo. I'm not fond of the flats arranged on the south side of the river with tops resembling open books, either; and especially in the newly opening range of skyscrapers that now hem in the refurbished Battersea Power Station, destroying the wonderful view that used to be from the Chelsea side. With modern buildings, offsetting impersonal facades can be achieved by imaginative landscaping: around here are many good examples - helped by the fact that they tend mostly to be built into hillsides, which in flat terrain can be contrived using any displaced spoil.

*(I hope one is still allowed to use the expression "bête noir", by the way)