Becket List

Henry Becket

Description

The Becket List is a not entirely serious compendium of 'First World Problems' - the sort of stuff that drives us round the bend on a daily basis.How is it that atonal music, bus stations, cling-film and coat-hangers can bugger us up so comprehensively? Or passport control people, modern poetry, or just about anything you'll find in a typical hotel bedroom?Embracing both the inanimate - from allen keys to Rawlplugs - and the animated (well, in some cases) - from your fellow-travellers to every third-rate waiter who ever walked the earth - this book is essential for your sanity.As such, this comprehensive A to Z provides a signal service to humanity.

Sujets

• Humour

Informations

• Publié par: RedDoor Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839780554
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE BECKET LIST
THE BECKET LIST
An A to Z of First World Problems
HENRY BECKET
ILLUSTRATED BY TONY HUSBAND

Dedicated to all those second-rate designers, manufacturers, managers, broadcasters, officials, writers, fellow travellers and suchlike who so selflessly and unintentionally have provided such rich source material
Published by RedDoor
www.reddoorpress.co.uk
Text © 2020 Henry Becket
Illustrations © 2020 Tony Husband
The right of Henry Becket to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover illustration: Tony Husband
Cover and internal design:
sheerdesignandtypesetting.com
Contents
Introduction
A
Absurd beards
Acronyms
Agony aunts and astrologers
Air conditioning in hotel rooms
Aircrew safety demos
Airport security
Allen keys
All French workers
Alliteration, tedious and/or contrived
All-purpose oriental restaurants
All ticket machines
Amateur fellow travellers
Anaglypta
Any TV or radio show with audience participation
Art, modern
Atonal music
Audience participation
B
Back to school
Backwards baseball caps
Bad tans
Bagged salads
Bagpipes
Bankers
Barbeques
Beards
Bicycle wheels
Blatant regifting
Boiled eggs
Botox
Bumbags
Business jargon
Bus stations
C
Cafetières
Call centres
Cats who refuse expensive cat food that was their favourite until you bought in bulk
Ceiling light fittings
Celebrities
Chewing gum packets that disintegrate
Christmas commercialities
Chuggers
Clichés
Clingfilm
Cocktails
Coffee, instant
Combative clothes hangers
Concertgoers who start conducting
Conspiracy theorists
Constant changes to dietary advice
Consultants
Continually-being-reinvented mobile phone chargers
Corporate slogans
Cosmetic surgery
Cruet sets in Indian restaurants
Cushions
D
Daytime TV
Dim light bulbs
Dishwashers
DJs
Doormen
Drizzle
Dropped buttered toast
Dry January
Dumbing down
E
‘Early doors’
Elastoplast
Email strings
Energy saving light bulbs
Estuary English
Everyone winning on sports day
Excruciating rustling
F
F1
Fake candles
Fanny packs
Fashion
Fellow passengers
Film sequels and overexposed TV series
Flashing images
Flossing
Formula One
French workers
Fruit with meat
Fusion food
G
Gatwick Airport
Generalisations
Glue that sticks to everything but what you want it to
Go large’
Golf, golfers, golfing clothes, golf clubs
Guessing the wrong platform when arriving at a station
H
Hairdressing salon names that try to be amusing but aren’t
Half-in/half-out Rawlplugs
Hand dryers
Hashtags
Health & Safety
Hen parties
High-waisted trousers
‘Holds knife like pen’ (HKLP)
Holding patterns (esp. Gatwick on a Monday morning)
Hospitality industry
Hospitality suite(s)
Hotel room doors
Hotel rooms with incomprehensible light switches
Hyper-parenting
I
Ice in whisky
Inappropriate spending by government, national, regional and local bodies
Inappropriate/out-of-context tat
Incompetent cocktail barmen
Instant coffee
Intrusive noise
J
Jet skis
K
‘Keep calm and…’
Kid-centric
Kidults
L
Lampshades that don’t sit right
Lazy dog owners
Listicles
Loo rolls
Loo rolls in public conveniences
Loud eating
Loud keyboard usage
Loud mobile phone calls
Loud/unamusing ringtones on mobile phones
M
Malls
Man flu
Merlot
Middle managers
Midges (and other pointless insects)
Ministry of Defence
Misplaced apostrophe’s
Missed opportunities for amusing ‘twinning
Mobile phones
Mosquito repellent
Motorhomes
Movember
Musty-smelling hotels
N
Name changes
Nannying
Neck supports on planes
New loo rolls with the end stuck down
New Yorkers who loudly announce themselves and carry on talking at the tops of their voices
No dogs in pubs
Noise (offensive)
No phone signal
No smoking in pubs
Not refilling ale glasses but starting afresh
Not washing after weeing, or worse
O
Officiousness
‘On a journey’
Onesies
Openly displayed bakery products
Optics
Option to tip offered when service charge already added
Ostentatious physical exercises
Out of season food
Over-engineering
Over-packaging
Overtaking on the inside
Overused/over-hyped descriptions
Oxford Street
Oysters that refuse to open
P
Pampering
Paris
Passport control
Patronising policemen
People who confuse the concepts of ‘working’ and ‘being at work’
People who don’t watch where they’re going when they’re looking at their mobile phone
People who engage in longwinded conversations at check-ins
People who get into an Underground carriage before those on board alight
People who get to the front of checkout queue then find to their astonishment that they have to pay for what they’ve put into their trolley
People who pretend not to realise that there is a queue
Personnel
Pesky pool inflatables
Pet shops with appalling names
Photocopiers that devour paper and refuse to disgorge it
Photographs of food outside eating establishments
Piercings
Piped music
Piss-taking cab drivers
Poetry that isn’t
Pointless sports
Policemen
Policemen pretending to be helpful
Politically correct
Positive vetting/stereotyping
Potholes
PowerPoint
Predictive text
Premature promotions
Pretend working class
Prolonged poppy-wearing
Pub barmen who are crap at their job
Public displays of affection (PDA)
Public transport announcements
Pubs
Puns
Pushy parents
Q
Quasi-famous ‘lifestyle’ bloggers
Questionable children’s names
R
Radio announcers
Raising the pitch of your voice towards the end of a sentence as if asking a question when you’re actually making a statement
Rawlplugs
Ready meals
Reality TV
Red Nose Day
Red ropes outside wannabe in-demand venues
Reloading the dishwasher for no good reason
Reply to all
Restaurants that can’t cook as well as I can
Restrooms
Revolving doors that are way more complicated than they need to be
Ridiculously closely targeted advertising
Room fresheners
Rubber mats in playgrounds
Rucksacks
Rules
Rustling
S
Safe spaces
Sagging trousers on youths
St Patrick’s Day
Sales
Sales conferences
Sarcastic policemen
Saturday night TV
Sausages
Scented candles
Scottish football news
Scrambled eggs
Screw caps on wine bottles
Selfies
Sellotape
Shouty dads at school sports occasions
Shovel action by people eating
Showers that are impossible to work
Simpering
Sleeping policemen
Sleepy suits
Sleet
Slush
Snowflakes
So
Sober for October
Sourdough bread
South Kensington
Split infinitives
Sponsorship ‘bumpers’ at the end of a commercial break
Stag weekends
Station stop
Sticky labels that refuse to unstick
Strategy
T
Tans
Taps/plugs that don’t work
Tattoos
Tautology
Team-building
Teapots/kettles/jugs that refuse to pour accurately
The easily offended
The fashion industry
The M1
The National Anthem
The National Trust
The Proms
The Royal Family
The wrong kind of snow/rain/leaves/sun etc.
Theme parks
‘There’s a good service on all Underground lines’
Things that were once effective but no longer are
Ticket machines
Toilet flushes
Too frequent firework displays
Tourists
T-shirts with desperately unfunny slogans
Trunki
Twitter
U
Uggs
Unnecessary cushions
Unnecessary signs
Unnecessary streetlights
Unwanted participating in the listening experience of others
USBs
V
Vaping
Velour tracksuits
Very white trainers
VIP areas
Virtue-signalling
Visitor centres
Visual clichés
W
Waiting staff who won’t catch your eye
W*nkers
Warning labels
Weather forecasts that contain nothing of any use
‘We must do lunch sometime’
‘We will shortly be landing into…’
Wet wipes
What the critics say
Wheelie luggage that hasn’t mastered the master-slave relationship
‘Where’s the bathroom?’
‘Will you do this for me please?’
Wine descriptions
Wobbly tables in restaurants
Woke
X
X-rays
Y
Young people who can only communicate by shouting
Z
Zeitgeist
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Introduction
Not so long ago, and not for the first time interrupting me whilst I was totally justifiably ranting at the television – MY television, in MY living room, whilst sitting on MY sofa – my wife accused me of being ‘so angry, about so many things. ALL the time’.
‘You’re dead right,’ I replied, after a nanosecond’s thought. Which set me thinking.
Maybe I wasn’t alone? Maybe compiling a compendium of things that could be put right/restored/replaced/repaired/revisited/re-oriented (and many other relevant things beginning with R, despite my strictures about alliteration, see p.23 ) would be helpful to others and help rid the world of unrighteous anger. In a nutshell, I could provide a service that might have a chance of preventing us all going to hell in a handcart. And writing as the conservative anarchist which I believe myself to be (the answer the immortal Peter Cook famously gave to a question about his politics, if I recall), this might be a counter to so much that is going wrong in our world.
A list, I thought. That’s what it needs – a simple little list of things that make me (and, I suspect, many others) angry. Initially, all I had in mind were a few pages of A4, but in no time at all the list had taken on extraordinary proportions, as you’re about to discover. There is just SO MUCH to be angry about. And of cours