Trash

I HATE YOU TRASH!! I hate you and your stupid ‘dress code’ and your shit music and the pretentious wankers who pass through your doors tragically seeking some sort of validation or involvement in 'the scene’ - whatever that is...
I supposed I ought to deal with the music first: Well, if you take the most predictable, obvious indie – old and new – mix it will generic electro and throw in some deliberately obscure noise for good measure, you have a pretty accurate summary of the drivel that Trash considers a ‘good night’.
And what are you ‘Errol’? Are you by any chance a wannabe rock star who never quite had the balls or talent to make it, so you became a DJ so you could be worshipped by 16 year old girls (and those who wish they’re still 16!). Oh and now you just ‘happen’ to have some stuff out on CD, y’know, whatever, not like you’re bothered or anything. Yeah, right.
Somehow, somehow the beast that is Trash has clawed its way to the top of the indie club tree in London, to the point where it now wields a ridiculous amount of clout over everywhere else – the Topshop of indie land if you will…I can’t for the life of me work out who made Trash the standard against which all other indie nights are judged, but I really resent it – it’s so not cool.
Of course my hatred of Trash overlaps somewhat with my hatred of electro, but it’s not for this alone that I despise it. Mainly, it’s for taking the concept of ‘the indie club’ – pure, innocent and slightly geeky and transforming it into a shallow, cooler-than-thou lifestyle, complete with bitchy message boards and ideas above its station like the ability to ‘make or break’ new bands.

Holmes Place Rucksacks

You see a smart City-type woman on the bus, elegantly dressed in a suit with matching shoes and handbag. And there it is, strapped to her back like a turtle’s shell, a huge, crammed-full, cheap nylon rucksack with ‘Holmes Place’ or ‘Fitness First’ emblazoned across it. I hate them for many reasons:
One is practical – they totally disturb the woman’s centre of gravity, rendering them as stable on a moving bus as a wobbly newborn lamb, which means they skitter about and crash into everyone with their unwieldy cargo.
My second reason is aesthetic: how can you ruin a nice, ladylike outfit with a huge, ugly, clumsy rucksack for God’s sake?!
And my third reason: They’re so pretentious. After all, there’s no law saying a person must carry workout stuff in the tacky free bag supplied by the gym. You could put it in a nice bag. Except they don’t because they want to say to the world ‘Look! I work in an office but I’m sooo good I’m going to the gym before work, or in my lunch hour, or after work! See, I’ve got my Holmes Place rucksack to prove it! Oops did I bump you with it...’

'Chuggers' aka charity muggers

I'm not a bad person. I give to charity and refrain from kicking old ladies (though sometimes it's tempting). So why then do I feel guilty everytime I walk past some irksome, dreadlocked twat who apparently just wants 'a minute of my time'? But they don't, do they? What they really want is to guilt trip me into handing over my card details so they can take money out of my bank account every month.
That may be fair enough - after all charities have to compete in an aggressive marketplace for their share of the pie - rattling collection tins on street corners just ain't gonna cut it these days. However I do resent the implication that chuggers do their job for love rather than money - that's a big misconception. One chugger I had the misfortune of talking to (in a bar, cos they knew my friend, I would never stop to talk to them on the street) said they earned £9 an hour!!! At the time that was more than I earned um, 'slaving away' as a receptionist.

And I really hate the way that boy chuggers always target girls and vice versa, as if you're supposed to feel flattered that this hunky young moral crusader is practically chatting you up - yes you, dowdy office girl - right here in the street!! They also try to make some connection between you and them to startle you into stopping "Hey! You're wearing red and so am I!! Let's talk!"

One day soon some poor unfortunate chugger is going to feel the full force of my wrath - I've been rehearsing a speech in my head that's just the right combination of spite, wit and ethical superiority to make them feel like shit for a change.

Mouldy Sluggish Flies

Yes it's that wonderful time of year again when stupid spazzy fruit flies lurch and drone their way around my kitchen, settling on every surface and exploding in clouds from the rubbish bin every time i open it.
I really hate them - they're creepy and sinister and gross and seemingly indestructible. They act all innocent and dumb - "oh, am i bothering you by hovering unhygenically and turning all your fruit mouldy? Sorry about that, but I am a moudly sluggish fly you know, it's my job."
I've done everything I can to make the kitchen a hostile place for them to be - ruthlessly bleached the bin within an inch of its life, wiped every surface with a rigour I seldom excercise, even grudgingly allowed the spooky spider to remain in an attempt at natural pest management, but all to no avail.
Still they hover, lazily - ooh look there's another one! SMACK! Got the little bugger - loitering in the air like a bunch of dissaffected, hoody-wearing teens.

Make Doherty History

That's right folks, join the campaign started by St. Damon of Blur to get this scrawny, untalented no-hoper booted out of the public eye.
He clearly thinks he's possessed of a great genius and by surrounding himself with thickos has managed to perpetuate this myth, but Pete, my sweet, a few GCSE's doesn't make you Byron!
This sissy, middle class 'bad boy' created the fantasy world of 'Albion' popluated by junkies, poets, princesses blah blah blah. Get over it mate - you live in a stinky bedsit in Bethnal Green and you're nowhere near as talented as great indie poets like Morrissey (bows head in reverence), Jarvis or even bloody Menswear!
It's depressing to think that 'the kidz' worship this crackhead, who's managed to convince them that smack and talent go hand in hand. They don't.

Topshop

I have always hated Topshop. I never thought it was an exciting wonderful place full of affordable fashion. Instead I saw it as overpriced and pretentious in contrast to its humble neighbour, Hennes (yes, I still call it 'Hennes' no matter how hard they try to convince me it's 'H&M'!)

No one in their right mind would ever set foot inside Topshop on a Saturday because truly, it is like descending into the bowels of Hell. Hot, crowded, noisy - your senses are assaulted, rendering you confused and vulnerable to their aggressive marketing tactics.

One of the many things that irritates me about Topshop is the way it stole my indie girl style. I don't want to see quirky faux-vintage dresses being sold off the peg for £40 - I want to find them myself in a charity shop and look different, dammit! It's most infuriating to find that most fashion looks better on 14 year old girls than me, and when they trample all over my style with their coltish limbs, I might as well give up altogether and start shopping in BHS.

I also hate the way celebrities are so desperate to get in on the Topshop act- where once they wore their designer labels with pride, now it's all "oh this? I snapped this up in Topshop dahling - I know, it's just fabulous!". Topshop sponsors young designers (ok, grudgingly a good thing, but I still prefer to imagine that they're slowly brainwashing them) and is a hot spot on the London Fashion Week map for visiting fashionistas.

The high street's relationship with high fashion has become warped to the point where it's no longer a one way street where the high street imitates the designers, oh no, now the designers are actually getting their ideas from Topshop - how tragic is that!!

Some other thoughts:

I hear Topshop is to open in New York. When will the juggernaut stop?

Provincial concessions - good or bad? Actually, quite good - I think it's just the arrogance of the Oxford Circus flagship store that really irritates me.

Mutton Dressed As Lamb shopping with their daughters - annoying and embarrassing and tacky...

I wait patiently for the day when the Topshop bubble bursts

Adults publicly reading Harry bleeding Potter

The two most common offenders are:
Middle ages men in suits - they also wear 'comedy' ties and socks in a pathetic attempt to convince you that they have a personality.
Faux cutesy girls who wear a lot of pink, their hair in bunches and fluffy, faux fur garments with stripy socks, platform trainers and kid's satchels.
Grown ups should not read Harry Potter because It. Is. A Children's. Book.
Having been forced to read a few pages to a small child, I am also convinced that it is not a very good children's book. Formulaic, cliched and obvious.
It's fine for kids to read Harry Potter as long as they know that there's a lot more good stuff out there. But grown ups like to read it in public as some kind of creepy fashion statement "Look! I'm so childlike and innocent, I'm engrossed in a magical tale of wizards and magic! and I'm a 44 year old man! Aren't I sweet and endearing?"
No, you are creepy and predictable.
And I'm sick of hearing sob stories about how poor, pooor JK Rowling ('JK'? what, she seriously didn't think her book would sell if people knew a woman wrote it? spineless) wrote her mangum opus on napkins in a greasy spoon and she was a single mother! Booooring.

Vice Magazine

I REALLY hate Vice. I shall attempt to channel my bile into a spiteful, witty polemic, but I can't promise that it won't spiral out of control into incoherent ranting...
Vice is free - this means that it makes all its money from advertising and the people who make it don't need to worry about boring things like 'standards' or 'ethics'. So they can put people with learning disabilites into trashy couture and photograph it in a 'hilarious' fashion shoot. Or drench 12 year old girls in water and take snapshots of them frolicking together in a vaguely erotic, Lolita-ish manner. How post modern! How avant garde! Wow, they're really pushing the boundaries there! Controversial! etc...
I tolerated this nonsense until i opened 'The Sex Issue' (what, unlike every other issue?) and was confronted with a page of photos of exploded and dismemered bodies on the streets of Baghdad. Ignoring the fact that I have family living in that bloody, battered city, this is still one of the most tasteless things I have ever seen - made all the more offensive by the fact that it was included in the 'Sex issue'.
It seems obvious to me that the people who make Vice magazine are all closet gay, middle class trustafarians with some paedo issues. They perve at anorexic, underage girls and they love writing about how cool anal sex is - not protesting too much at all, are we boys?
How this is ok just because it's in an 'alternative' magazine is beyond me. If you saw it in the Daily Sport they'd be in jail in seconds. But because they're not making any money from selling it (I'm sure the revenue from advertising all goes to charity!) they have 'artistic licence' to 'explore' these controversial issues. Yeah right, sad perves.
And as if their sorry rag isn't obnoxious enough, Vice then bought a pub in 'trendy' Old Street and filled it with their pretentious cronies. Walk into this place just once, like I did and you will instantly turn around and leave with a bad taste in your mouth.

Emails from people who are 'travelling'

Get this into your manky, dreadlocked heads:
I do NOT CARE about the mystical experience you had watching the sun come up on a beach in Thailand when you were off your face on cheap drugs.
Spare me the 'hilarious' tales of high jinks on trains and buses.
Don't patronise me with 'sensitive' accounts of local colour.
If you are a real friend, just tell me you're alive and not in prison or hospital.
If you're someone I went to school or college with but have not spoken to in years, fuck off.

Indie Boys

It's depressing and disappointing to note that, in their own way, indie boys can be just as sexist, misogynistic and conservative as their pikey counterparts. Here's my top reasons for hating indie boys:
1) They're invariably skinnier than me - this results in 'milkmaid syndrome' and feeling like they couldn't protect me in a fight.
2) They spend longer on their hair than I do.
3) They only fancy Swedish and Japanese girls.
4) They always turn out to be gay, leaving you questioning your femininity. Don't worry, it's not you, it's them.
I hate the way it's assumed that just because an indie boy has alternative taste in music, and is fey and wimpy, they'll automatically have an enlightened attitude towards women. Most don't - they just want you to sit there looking interested while they witter on about the profound subtext to their favourite Belle and Sebastian b-side. Knobs.