mightaswell.

As you might have suspected, after five days of eating nothing but mini food portions suitable for a toddler, I caved in. Hard. There were pints of beer (which I just spelled as bear… mmhh, a lovely pint of bear!), an unusually large cheese and onion pie served on a plate as big as a wagon wheel (which I just spelled as whagon weel… wat’s whrong with me today?), and a giant chunk of bread and butter pudding, drowning in a olympic pool of custard. I felt guilty, but extremely happy.

But I can explain it, honestly. There’s a reason for my defeat. It was triggered by this:

Office lunch from hell. A ‘microwaveable snack pizza’ (2 for a pound from the poundshop… and we all know that buying any food – except biscuits perhaps – from the poundshop is tantamount to self-torture), mini jammie dodgers, and, sticking with the ‘hell theme’, Lucifer’s very own fluorescent pee*, lovingly bottled by the magnificent people of Scotland. Of course I’m talking about Irn Bru. A mini bottle of Irn Bru to be precise, which only meant that the horrible experience of drinking it lasted not quite as long as usual, but Irn Bru nonetheless. And with this, I ended my excursion into the wonderful world of tiny food.

What did I learn from Project Minimize Me? Buying mini food is stupidly expensive. Some mini foods are better than the big ones (Digestive biscuits! Mini cheddars!). Sometimes it’s even nicer to have just a mini portion of something that’s quite intense – like a small can of coke, or a tiny cupcake. With mini foods you can have loads of different things in a single meal. Quorn sausage rolls are vile. Drinking coffee from a tiny cup means I can even have TWO cups and still sleep at night.

Mission: completed.

* I didn’t want to write ‘piss’ in the main body of the post, but you all know it would sound much better than ‘pee’.

I usually don’t post news here, as there are many other sites that do it so much better, but this one got me quite upset. Only today it was reported that Wythenshawe Park, which I wrote about last year, was the target of some shockingly sick vandalism. Some time on Sunday evening / Sunday night, they broke into the aviary located in the park, beheaded 18 birds (seriously, what the fuck?), threw them around, poisoned a carp in a pond with fertiliser, chopped down trees and smashed windows, causing more than £10,000 of damage, according to the BBC.

One way to spend your bank holiday weekend, I suppose.

The BBC has some more details on the case, and the police (0161 856 4546) and Crimestoppers (0800 555 111) ask anyone who has any information to come forward.

Giant chicken will come and get you. Yes, you.

Yes, I write letters. Not just any letters though. I write angry letters. In, what I presume is, the great British tradition of passive aggressiveness, I write politely phrased letters to whoever I believe might be responsible for whatever it is that makes me furious, kindly asking them to ‘SORT IT ASAP YOU HEAR ME?‘. Most of the time, I get angry about the cleanliness of places, or sexism in the media; Metro is one of my favourite targets regarding the former, and public areas in Manchester for the latter. Or vice versa. You know what I mean.

As I am currently drafting a letter to my MP, Mr John Leech (yes, it’s THAT serious. I will use the word ‘eyesore’ and send an actual letter in the mail), I thought I might as well share my passion with you. Please find attached an email I sent to the Heaton Park management team in June 2010 after a visit to the ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ performance regarding the toilet facilities.

Dear* Heaton Park team,

while I appreciate* Heaton Park as great* and rather tidy* park, I was shocked to find the toilet facilities near the farm centre in a terrible condition last weekend. The general cleanliness of the facilities was poor, hardly any of the doors could be locked, the washing basins were dirty and there was absolutely no tissue available – other visitors commented that it was almost as bad as “portaloos at a festival”. I visited the park on Sunday 20th June to watch the Shakespeare play and I expected the facilities to be looked after, especially for such an event.

Please take this as a kind* suggestion to improve the bathrooms to make Heaton Park more pleasant* for all visitors.

Thank you very much*,

Angry Letter Lady.

I’m such a twat.

Nevertheless, here’s the reply I received from Mr Peter Davenport, only a few days later:

Dear* Samantha

May I first thank you for your email regarding the condition of the toilet block.*

At Heaton we make every effort to ensure that all our visitors leave the facility with every intention to return after a satisfying experience, it is always disappointing to have reports that our facilities are being maintained under standard, our contracted clean team are responsible for the maintenance of all the toilet facilities within the Park and have to monitor them at least every hour and clean where necessary, as you can appreciate with visitor numbers so high this sometimes has downsides to the service when monitoring other buildings within the Park. [...]

We will ensure that your supportive* comments and constructive* criticism are relayed to the clean team so that any further operations maybe implemented however as detailed above we will occasionally due to heavy use fall below standards expected from the management of Heaton Park.  Once again on behalf of Heaton Park I would like to apologise* for any inconvenience caused and hope this will not reflect on any future decision to visit.

Regards

Peter G. Davenport

Well, thank you Peter, thumbs up for the quick reply and the friendly reply. Much appreciated. Angry Letter Lady is happy again.

* Clear sign of passive aggressive behaviour.