Room 101

I’m aware that I have a habit of writing nothing on this blog for ages, then come in there with a big long blog entry that is so long it puts people off reading it. This is reducing my potential number of readers and is certainly reducing the number of comments I receive.

So forgive me, if you will, for indulging in something of a filler tactic. I have fallen into a habit with a good friend of mine that we send each other very short text messages about two things. The first is when one of us spots a celebrity. For example, when I saw Sir Ian McKellen at Homos Place gym the other week I sent her a text message just saying “Ian McKellen, Homos Place, MCR”. It’s a strangely satisfying thing to do. I shall share such things with you as well on the odd occasion that they happen (I live in Manchester, not Soho).

The other thing we do is send each other text messages about the small daily irritations of life. Sharing them with another really helps restore balance and sanity. I recommend that you do the same. Feel free to post your “Room 101” entries as comments.

The name, as I’m sure you know, is derived from a (still) very good TV show in the UK where celebrities come on and list things that would be in their own private Room 101 (from Orwell’s 1984). It’s rarely less than funny. Ann Robinson famously put the Welsh in Room 101, which is the only noteworthy thing I feel she’s ever done.

Anyway, here’s one I sent the other day to get the ball rolling.

Room 101:Daft young women who go to work in MCR in late October wearing sod all, whine endlessly about the cold & inflict suffocating extreme heating on others.

To make it more sport, if it’s possible to keep these within 160 characters (I’m too mean to pay for long text messages), it’s best to do so. On a blog I guess one could be more creative. Write them as haiku perhaps?