THINGS I hate: liver... doesn’t everybody? That 'v' in liver stands for 'vomit'. Ye olde wans say that if you leave a plate of raw liver in the bottom of the fridge and come back a few hours later, the liver will have crawled up the wall of the fridge, all by itself. Creepy, eh?
Once I fried up a large plate of liver for a loved one who was ill. This was a labour of love... I’m not awful fond of offal. Somewhere down the echoing corridors of memory, I seem to remember that Leopold Bloom liked his lips at the thought of a nice bit of kidney fried up on the pan. But I looked at the liver in our big frying pan and remembered an old Joycean curse: "S***e 'n' onions".
Other things I hate: some cyclists. This is self explanatory but shameful as, reader, I was one. Also, and I say this seriously, some of my best friends are... cyclists. But they are responsible types with fluorescent jackets and proper lights that beam like lighthouses in the dark... they would never dare creep up the side of you in the traffic jam, then plonk themselves in front and pedal at a mad one mile per hour.
I have a pathological fear of running over a cyclist – it’s like I always hated the MOT because when the mechanic in the inspection pit told me to drive over, I used to cry "But what if I knock your head off?". Lord protect us from cyclists – I always give them a very wide berth.
Things I hate: people who walk along the street with their eyes glued to their mobile phones. Wake up people, look around you! In Manchester, they have introduced slow lanes on the pavement for such users.
But I joined the gang the other day and was doing the walking/texting thing I hate. "What are you doing?" said a work colleague as he nearly walked over me and I threatened to kaibosh the lunchtime queue.
"Moi?" I said. "I’m spexting, as in making spaghetti bolognaise by text."
The truth was that the jewel I married (yes, ma, I don’t know I’m living nor what, indeed, I did to deserve him) wanted to know how I did my spag bol because he thought my version was better than his.
As it is better never to look a gift husband in the mouth, I texted back that he only liked my dinner better because he hadn’t made it. Psychology – simples!
"But what do you put in yours?" he texted.
"A jar of Dolmio and another jar of Lloyd Grossman" I texted back.
"Two jars of sauces??"
"Yes."
There was a long textual silence. A marital hiatus.
Then: "Two jars, honestly?"
"Yes, and half a teaspoon of chilli flakes."
"We'll not be doing that after Brexit comes," he texted.
Sheer decadence will be out of the way. So will double the sugar and salt, which is not the worst thing.
Then I did the other thing I hate which is running for a big pink double decker bus up the Dublin Road at high speed. My Aunt Eileen has plenty of advice gleaned in over 90 years of laughter: "Never run after a man or a bus, there’s always another one coming," she’d say.
She also used to add: "I’ve known many a man who goes into hospital with a dodgy appendix and comes out with a nurse."
But I ran after the large pink bus with my small pink bus card in my hand and I clambered on and walked right past the driver and up the stairs.
"Excuse me?" he cried. Things I hate: the embarrassment of having forgotten to pay my fare. The shame, the shame .... I am a liver hating, cyclist phobic, walking spexter, fare dodger.
"You’re a middle aged, middle class woman, he’s not going to consider you a fare dodger," said my son.
Monday was a bad day. The wind it blew and the rain it rained. And the large spot on my lip – that clearly hung about from adolescence and only decided to put in an appearance now – arose and appeared to many. I knew if I ordered a drink in the pub, the barman might ask "What’s your friend having?".
But I came home to a large steaming bowl of my own special recipe two-jar spaghetti bolognese made by somebody else... and yes, that always makes it taste a million times better.
