If your nose is running, you use a tissue right? Apparently not!

 Winter is the season of the year that I often find myself defending to my family and my friends. My sun-loving friends don’t see its beauty, but I take pleasure in the joys it brings: hot soups, snuggling by an open fire, hot steaming mugs of tea (or hot chocolate with marshmallows!); how spending the weekend indoors, watching TV, becomes a totally acceptable social practice.

 But as much as I delight in the frosty season’s positive attributes, I admit, I do have one issue with winter: it brings with it a multitude of anti-social behaviour that really does annoy me.

 With the cooler months comes the usual onslaught of colds and flu. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m unsympathetic to the cold sufferer. I’m the first to throw my own pity party when my sinuses are blocked to the point where I have to fight to inhale. But I do take issue with people who refuse to follow simple etiquette guidelines that help us all get through the cold season without killing each other.

 Public opinion is divided about who’s more annoying – the cougher or the sniffler. But although both can make you want to tear your hair out when you’re stuck in a confined space with them, I vote the sniffler as the most annoying of pests. I sympathise with the cougher, because a cough is an involuntary spasm of the body that no-one has the power to control. And a cougher usually has the decency to remove themselves from company to find water or a lolly to soothe their throat.

 The sniffler on the other hand, has no defence. For those who may have been napping in kindergarten during this simple lesson on manners: if your nose is running, use a tissue. Anyone who’s ever sat next to a sniffler in a car, on a plane, or a train – as I did recently – will understand my frustration.

 Unfortunately, the train was pretty much packed to the rafters when I boarded it so I was just grateful to find somewhere to sit for the hour-long journey. This person’s “sniffle show” began not even two minutes after I was settled in my seat. I let the first couple of sniffles slide, because one can be forgiven for the occasional sniff. But, after the fourth one, I thought, surely it’s time to reach for a tissue right? But no, he continued, his snivelling chorus not even drowned out by the rowdy bunch of teenagers singing off-key and talking loudly two rows back.

 Unable to contain my irritation any longer, I pulled a tissue (a CLEAN one of course) out of my pocket and decided to offer it to him, which he declined. Driven almost to insanity by the revolting, repetitive noise, I tried to calm down by turning the situation into a game, so I began to count the seconds between each sniffle. He couldn’t last 15 seconds without making the disgusting noise.

 I don’t think serial snifflers are bad people, but I can’t understand why they aren’t aware of how irritating that sound can be. And what’s more, it’s SO avoidable. Maybe they relied too much on their mothers to wipe their noses as children? In fact, I bet snifflers are the same people who take their dirty laundry to their parent’s place for Sunday-night dinner.

 The only bright side to this man’s refusal to blow his nose is that he didn’t carry a handkerchief. Don’t even get me started on those dirty, germ-ridden snot rags that fester inside coat pockets!

Who’d have thought it: but hunger can make you do some really crazy things.

 Since when did going out for dinner become a marathon event? Last week, my parents set up a get-together with some family friends. I called the restaurant to make a reservation, only to be told they “didn’t take bookings”.

 This modern day peculiarity of the restaurant industry confuses me. In a world where we’re usually rewarded for planning ahead and displaying amazing organisational skills, it seems strange such forward-thinking is not appreciated when it comes to eating out.

 Even though our food plans were now in a state of change, our friends convinced us to meet them at the restaurant at 6pm – surely we’d get a table that early. But arriving at 5.45pm (a time I believed no one other than my grandparents ate at); we were shocked to see the restaurant already packed out.

 I was ready to turn on my heels and head to the nearest pizza joint, but convinced by our friends to join the queue, I begrudgingly stayed. Standing in the foyer, clock-watching, with hunger pangs shooting through my stomach like a pinball, I felt like a groupie waiting to catch a glimpse of One Direction. But at least the boy band greet their fans with beaming smiles; the waiters walking by were stony-faced and snotty, the contempt in their eyes confirming how humiliating it was that instead of lining up to meet international pop stars, we were lining up for a plate of pasta.

 As the clock ticked past 7pm, and I started to feel faint with hunger, our friends argued that the time we’d already committed would be for nothing if we gave up now. Had we been huddled in a trench during wartime, this argument might have been appropriate, but the fact we’d resorted to motivational speeches while waiting for dinner only highlighted the silliness of this “no bookings” situation.

 I can see why restaurants do it – a queue that stretches two blocks is wonderful advertising and it signifies the food is great. But as much as I’m a foodie, I have to wonder, can any dish really be worth an hour-long wait? To me, the answer is no, especially since some of my favourite meals are served within a few minutes, just by driving up to a window.

 Call me old-fashioned, but I like to eat when I’m hungry. So if I turn up for a meal, but haven’t even seen the menu two hours later, my stomach becomes uncooperative. But hunger does drive you to do crazy things…such as believing them when they say it’s only a 20-minute wait. It never is. If I’d known up-front it would be an hour, I’d have been at home curled up on the couch eating reheated pasta by the time they called my name.

 After 90 minutes – as our friends and I were almost coming to blows over how much longer to wait – we were finally called to our table. I say ‘our’ table, so you can imagine the look on my face when the waiter ushered us to a table that already seated four people. Not only was there a ‘no bookings’ establishment, it was one of those ‘cram-as-many-people-on-a-communal-table-as-you-can’ places.

 Starving, with sore feet from standing for so long and now unable to have a private conversation with our friends, I found myself in an emotional state I’d NEVER experienced before – too angry to eat.

Why do people insist on tweeting what they eat?

 There are people on Twitter who attach pictures of what they’re about to eat for tea. “OMG. *drool* Can’t wait! Divine Sigh!” they dribble. You click and there’s a picture of a couple of Thai fishcakes. Stop it. It’s weird. Your Twittered Thai fishcakes do not look in any way appetising.

 We haven’t relished the smell of them cooking. We haven’t been impressed by the sight of your loved one whipping about the kitchen as you listen to jazz, sip a glass of wine across the kitchen bench and watch with excited eyes like that cat in Shrek. So that final sprinkling of home-grown coriander has you all hot and bothered? Please, don’t feel the need to share.

 You know what? On Twitter your juicy fishcakes come up looking like a couple of manhole covers scattered with hedge clippings. Keep your food porn to yourself. Some of us are trying to have actual sex. Your habit of posting this stuff is creeping us out. What is it with foodies?

 Cookbooks are now erotic, apparently. We’re also supposed to go to illicit blog addresses that are passed around on Facebook and once there, fantasise about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s pillowy Coronation Cauliflower dripping with organic olive oil. Well, you know what? Some of us have been eating Mr Heinz baked beans for years and are perfectly satisfied. We’re not about to have it off with of Hugh’s rare breed of pork.

 I’m not buying this food porn nonsense. No matter which way you slice and dice it, Charmaine Solomon is not some sort of gastronomic Larry Flynt. Cookbooks do not make normal people horny. People don’t stash their Donna Hay or Jamie Oliver in the bottom of the sock drawer when the babysitter comes over. If food was that sexy someone would have set up a 1300 line where you could pay a bloke to read you a soufflé recipe in a husky voice.

 I’ve never been able to make the leap to see food as erotic – oh, except for when, as excitable teenagers, we used to make X-rated banana splits at slumber parties, but that’s another story. Let’s say the foodies are right. Let’s give it a go…

 Right now I’m looking at a photograph of a dish of Moroccan figs and fresh pears heaped together, sweating in a tawny syrup. Droplets of sweet juice slide down the smooth flanks of pinked fleshy curves and are caught, glistening in delicate tendrils of lemon rind…Nah. I can’t do it. Still looks like a bowl of fruit to me.

 You’d think foodies would feel embarrassed, gagging for “gastro porn” when television footage of millions starving in Africa is obscenity enough. It’s difficult to make a bowl of UNIMIX protein porridge look erotic. And yet they will not stop. I’m not saying that aphrodisiacs suck…if only. You can lick, suck and savour an oyster, trouble is that delicious little morsel can’t lick and suck you back. To be truly erotic, food has to be used as a sex toy, and for my money you just can’t go past cheese in an aerosol can.

 Still, in one way you have to admire foodies. When the difference between a boring Saturday night alone and an evening of mind blowing erotic adventure is a backlit picture of a char grilled eggplant…you’ve got it made.

Blowjob Etiquette (by a female).

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