My Top 5 Pet Hates - Listography

This week's Listography topic from Kate Takes 5, Pet Hates, was a little too easy. I like to think of myself as a tolerant and accepting person. Perhaps I need to re-evaluate that!

My Top 5 Pet Hates

1. When people say "Let's get this show on the road" or worse "Let's get this road on the show". Is that supposed to be clever? My ex-husband used to say that a lot. He also used to say "Fairy snuff" instead of "Fair enough". Made me cringe every time.

2. This next pet hate is one my current husband is guilty of (just to keep it fair and so you don't think I'm picking on my ex). I love to see a scraped clean plate and always finish all my dinner. It's fair enough (or fairy snuff!) if you really dislike something and leave it or if you are really full up and leave it, but what I HATE is when people leave just a little bit. It's not enough to give you indigestion if you make the effort to scrape it up and eat it but it is enough to be annoying when you are stacking the plates to wash up. I hate scraping the little bits of leftovers into the bin - WHY DON'T YOU JUST FINISH YOUR MEAL PROPERLY!!! Husband - you have been warned.

3. Carrier bags that split. This doesn't happen often these days because of the trend now for reuseable heavy duty bags, but sometimes I forget to bring my extensive collection with me and have to rely on the shop's freebies. I actually have the most trouble with the Primark paper bags. I think it is because I can never say no to the question "Do you want to keep the hangers?" regardless of the fact that I have more hangers at home than I know what to do with. During the natural swinging action that occurs whilst walking, the hangars manage to pierce the paper and start the rip. Once it starts to go, you've had it.

4. Failure to use a teaspoon to transfer coffee granules into cup. Not only does this result in a rather ambiguous cup of coffee in terms of the perfect strength, there is also the fact that invariably whilst shaking the jar in the general direction of the waiting cup, those coffee granules bounce all over my wooden work surface to later absorb moisture and set like dark brown spots of concrete (albeit water soluble concrete but you get the drift).

5. Finally (and this is a biggy) it's a dirty washing pet hate. Socks scrunched into balls, T-shirt and jumper taken off as one and still tangled together, trousers with one leg in and one leg out, items worn for five minutes then dumped unceremoniously into the wash basket (do you think I don't have better things to do with my time than constant laundering??) and the biggest crime of all TISSUES LEFT IN POCKETS. Sometimes my husband will leave a ten pound note in his pocket. I quite like that. Once I have salvaged it and dried it I will treat myself to a little something as compensation for having to put up with all the dirty washing nonsense!

Black & White - Movie Meme #2

As Wendy has already written about my first choice (Tod Browning's 'Freaks')  I will have to go with my second choice - The Elephant Man (seems to be a theme emerging here!)


The Elephant Man is the beautifully told story of the fascinating and tragic character, Joseph Merrick. Suffering from severe deformities, Merrick is made to exhibit himself in a Victorian Freak Show before being 'rescued' by a London surgeon, Treves.

Anthony Hopkins plays the part of the surgeon to perfection as his relationship with Merrick develops and he comes to realise that beneath the disfigured exterior beats the heart of a gentile, articulate soul.

Although the dark, sordid environment of the Freak Show is in stark contrast to the bright, medical world in which Merrick finds himself, fundamentally, he is still a curiosity, exhibited now to an entirely different audience but still stripped of dignity.

As the story progresses, Merrick does find a heartwarming sense of belonging.

There are some incredibly touching moments. When Treves presents Merrick with a grooming set, we see the side of the man that cares about his appearance and desperately craves acceptance and love.

There are also some harrowing portrayals of the inhuman treatment Merrick had to endure.

I tend to forget that it is John Hurt who plays the part of The Elephant Man. The make up used to create the physical disfiguration is totally transforming and his voice is disguised by the impediments to his speech that further strengthen the illusion of the facial deformity. It is a totally convincing performance.

The fact that The Elephant Man was filmed in Black and White adds a beautifully atmospheric quality that is so easy to lose yourself in.

On a completely different note, I have a bit of a thing for Dexter Fletcher and this is yet another film where he has a minor role.

The Soundtrack to my Life

The soundtrack to my life begins with a song I vividly remember singing with my next door neighbour when we were both kids. The song is Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle of the Road and many years later, my next door neighbour and I (now middle aged and no longer residing in our adjoining houses) would sing it for old times sake, karaoke style, at my wedding. The song is very evocative of my childhood and a friendship that stands the test of time and is now intricately entwined with happy memories of my wedding day. In terms of actual musical value it is pretty dire but will remain forever in a position of great fondness for me.



As a teenager, I would regularly attend youth club discos. There was the moment in the evening when the tempo would slow down and the girls would wait with nervous anticipation to see if the boy she'd been making eyes at would ask her for a slow dance. Trainee lovers would be wrapped in each other embrace, swaying rhythmically, a bold hand descending down the body of a willing partner to rest gently on the curve of a firm young buttock... naively, beautifully sordid! Wishing on a Star by Rose Royce was the song that marked the transition. The opening bars of this song still gives me  a little shiver as I am catapulted back to that glorious moment when you realise that the object of your desires is walking towards you....



Hey Paula by Paula and Paul deserves a place in the soundtrack of my life as it was from this song that my parents arrived at the inspiration for my name. It was the song I played at my first wedding for the first dance but as the reception was held in the small living room of our starter home, there was not a great deal of first dancing! Little did I know I was actually marrying the wrong Paul. The Paul who would many years later become my husband was a guest at my first wedding.



John Denver, for reasons I can't quite fathom, has long been a contributor to the soundtrack to my life. When I was trying to learn to play guitar, the John Denver songbook taught me chords and plucking and strumming styles. My favourite JD song was always Annie's Song because it reflected how I wanted to feel about the man in my life and to have those feeling reciprocated. I never even came close to having my senses filled like a night in a forest in my first marriage but now I smugly enjoy the fact that I got there in the end!



My final choice (although I could list SO many more!) is a much more recent song, Tiger in the Night by Katie Melua. I was driving down the motorway from my home in Shropshire to go and deliver the news personally to my nonagenarian nan that I was getting a divorce but it was all OK - I was in a new relationship and  I was incredibly happy. I wanted her to hear it from me and it wasn't something I could do easily on the phone. It was a long drive and I was listening to some compilation car CDs that my girls had put together. Tiger in the Night came on.  The lyrics struck such a chord with me that I put it on repeat and listened to it over and over again for the rest of the journey so that I could memorise every single word. In a moment of madness I recorded myself singing it to my daughter's piano accompaniment as a present for the man who was 'the dream I'd see come true" and we played the original version during my marriage ceremony (I did briefly toy with the idea of using my recording but didn't think it entirely fair to inflict that on my guests!)