Caroline Verdon: Cars powered by pixie dust - what a load of nonsense

If you let things bottle up inside of you for too long, then eventually you’ll pop in a huge fit of rage and the anger will just seep out of every pore and no one needs to see that. There’s a guy in our office, who will remain nameless, who loves the word specifically. “What I mean specifically is” or “Let’s try and get a bit more specific about this” only he never says specific. He says Pacific and it’s been driving Donna in accounts berserk to the point that this week she just had to say something. Not to him, she’s not crazy, but to Ant and I. Before she mentioned anything we were blissfully unaware but now it is all we can hear. A problem shared is just a problem shared when it comes to irritations.

Everyone has something that annoys them. For me it’s to do with cars. I know it’s my problem. I know it says everything about me and nothing about anyone else but I irrationally hate those stickers you see on the side of cars that say “powered by fairy dust”. It’s nonsense, you’re an adult, it’s powered by diesel or petrol or LPG or electricity. A few weeks ago a car emblazoned with one of those stickers had conked out on the side of the Armley Gyratory and it took every ounce of self-restraint for me not to wind my window down and holler “how’s the fairy dust working out for you now?!” as I drove past. I know, I know. I’m a terrible person.

Ant’s irrational hatred is people who call bread rolls teacakes because as far as he is concerned, teacakes have currants in, like an out of season hot cross bun. Well, that opened a can of worms this week. Richard in Horsforth called us and was apoplectic – he reckons we should be calling them barmcakes and his irrational hatred is anyone who doesn’t. Ant’s comeback was that if you were to tell someone that you’d sort the cake for their party and you turned up with bread, chances are they’d be pretty furious. Good argument well made as far as I’m concerned!

We all have these things that really grate on us, usually for no good reason. When I was about 18 I worked in a little pub that served food. It was all home cooked and the menu was based on whatever the chef had bought at the farmer’s market so it was usually pretty good quality and it was definitely something he took pride in. One night he came out of the kitchen and headed to the bar to get a drink of water just as a waitress put down one of his dishes in front of a customer. Before they’d tasted it, the customer picked up the salt and pepper and started seasoning it. The chef went barmy. He completely lost it, shouting at the customer, telling them it was rude, and that they didn’t deserve to eat his food. He promptly took the dinner away from them and stormed back to the kitchen. On the one hand I did completely understand where he was coming from but on the other hand….awkward!

We asked you for those things you irrationally hated and you didn’t disappoint. Az Crossley said he hated people who chomp on their food with their mouths open. Caroline Cox hates people who don’t indicate, Kirsten Ransden blows her top when she sees animals dressed in clothes. All of these things are relatively normal things to get wound up about. Irrational but normal. But then there were the other calls.

Poor old Stephen Mulhern is all I can say. Sarah Richards in Rodley completely despises him. She hates his face, his banter, his clothes, absolutely everything. I tried pointing out that he had good qualities but I got completely shot down.

My favourite call though was from Ruth Marshall who cannot abide people in gorilla costumes. She’s a big fan of fancy dress, but gorillas? Don’t you even dare!