Cacti? Naff. QR code menus? Ghastly. Pets dressed in clothes? Utterly undignified

Food writer DEBORA ROBERTSON admits to a list of snobbish pet hates – and don’t get her started on dark chocolate obsessives

WE LIVE in a world where the old rules no longer count. Very few still care if you use fish knives or whether you say napkin or serviette, sofa or couch, loo or toilet. But some of us can’t help ourselves. Our lives are full of odd little snobberies, those things which mark one tribe out from another, the non-verbal signals which, when we meet strangers, indicate whether or not we might get on.

Like all idiosyncrasies, they bear little scrutiny. To say them out loud renders them ludicrous. The truth is, if we like a person, those foibles that irritate us in others become part of their charm. Such quirks of personality make us love them more. I hold a few petty snobberies quite tightly myself. Please feel free to judge...

FOOD AND DRINK

• Instant coffee. Also, bad, expensive ground coffee. Cappuccinos, too, after 11am, and lattes any time at all.

• Cheese with dried fruit or other abominations such as Parma violets, white chocolate and amaretto, or salted caramel added to it. Poor Wensleydale, the most sinned against cheese of all! What did it do to deserve such an undignified fate?

• Salted caramel.

• Eating standing up. The vogue for food festivals that convince people that eating off paper plates in a field while paying more than they would to sit at a lovely restaurant table is one of the great cons of the age.

• Queuing. Nothing I’d like to eat or drink would justify queuing more than ten minutes for it.

• Butter substitutes.

• Dark chocolate obsessives convinced the higher the cocoa solids, the more delicious. Why don’t they keep tucking into their 100 per cent cocoa bar and call me in a week when their mouth is so dry they could have been eating potting compost.

• People who crunch ice.

Perhaps they are tired of being invited to parties or think dentists aren’t rich enough. These antisocial creatures often double up as change-janglers. Hands out of your pockets, for God’s sake.

• Cereal is not a suitable human food, unless you are committed to the characterbuilding qualities of starting the day with a bowl of misery.

• Flapjacks. The above, as a bar.

• People will endlessly Goldilocks on about porridge: ‘You really must try my porridge, with whisky/cream/honey/almonds/chia seeds etc.’ All these ingredients are more delicious if you leave out the porridge. Instead have strawberries and cream for breakfast, or whisky. You’ll be happier and more popular.

• Tables covered in waxed paper or clingfilm and turned into elaborate tasting boards of fruit, charcuterie, cheese, crackers, dips. As soon as anyone moves a grape, the display looks a mess and has all the charm of an all-you-can-eat salad bar without a sneeze guard.

• Chocolate fountains. You would have thought Covid had killed them off but apparently we haven’t suffered enough.

• Attempting to show off by inflicting restaurant-style food and multiple courses on friends at home. If they cared about the composition of a jus, they’d have stayed in to watch MasterChef.

• Salting and peppering your dinner without tasting it first.

• Loud music in restaurants – any music really. The laziest, dreariest attempt to create an atmosphere.

• Restaurants with QR code menus and terrible, or no, wi-fi.

• Menus that read like shopping lists, forcing you into protracted conversation with your waiter, which neither of you wants.

HOME

• Chairs and sofas that match, and overly co-ordinated interiors in general. Rooms that look like everything was bought in an afternoon, probably online.

• New leather sofas, particularly in red or navy blue.

• Air fresheners, and their middleclass cousin, jars of scent-infused twigs, that ensure you are a cat’s paw away from your carpet forever smelling like an Uber.

• Square cushions that have been given a karate-chop indentation a second before guests arrive.

• Anyone who has anything with ‘Live’, ‘Love’ or ‘Laugh’ on it is without question a psychopath.

• Grey. Aren’t times miserable enough?

• Driftwood, or anything remotely Coastal Grandmother. The more inland you are, the more likely you are to find terrible examples.

• Bunting.

• ‘Pithy’ neon word sculptures.

LEAVING THE HOUSE

• People who speak too loudly for the space. Pipe down!

• Discussing parking or travel routes (instead, sex, religion and politics are fine as topics).

• Hen and stag weekends, destination weddings and baby showers where people are forced into a significant outlay of time, holiday allowance and money.

• An overactive WhatsApp group.

Also, adding people to groups without asking them. It feels like a potential hostage situation.

• Theme parties of almost any kind and all fancy dress parties.

SPORT

• Badminton is just ridiculous.

• Also, Formula 1. My God, the racket and also the clothes.

• People yelling ‘Get in the hole!’ as they watch golf.

• Generally speaking, anyone who plays squash has no conversation despite their superior lung capacity.

DRESSING OURSELVES

• Wearing black or white to weddings as a guest.

• Unconcealed zips on clothing.

• Too obvious labels on anything. Might as well hand out a price list.

• Dressing up pets in clothes is undignified to pet and owner.

PLANTS

• Variegated laurel, conifers and anything that would look at home on a roundabout.

• Cacti. There was once a cactus shop in East London which summed up my feelings entirely. Such unjolly plants.

• Anthuriums, birds of paradise, any flowers you have to touch to check they’re not plastic.

• Dried, silk and fake flowers.

• Anything with a name like a cocktail, such as Salvia Hot Lips, Rosa Sexy Rexy and Begonia Nonstop Fire. Yes, they’re real plants.

• Garden speakers that look like rocks. In fact, any garden hi-fi.

LANGUAGE

• People who call their pets ‘furbabies’. They’re first-rate dogs, not second-rate humans.

• It’s fine to call your husband ‘hubby’ if your intention is to emasculate him completely.

• ‘How are you?’ is not a question to which anyone who is not your doctor or a best beloved needs more than a ten-word answer.