Room 101 is a BBC comedy started in the 1990s where celebrities are invited to banish their pet hates forever. The name was inspired by the torture room in the novel Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell.
My pet peeves are:-
Artificial flowers displayed when the real thing would be out of season, i.e. snowdrops in summer.
Memorial flowers with their cellophane wrapping still on - it soon gets dirty & looks so sad.
Loo brushes - yes they serve a purpose, but eew so unhygienic!
Monkey puzzle trees - planted when young and (possibly) cute but grow to huge dimensions, usually right outside someone's living room window! Also, they remind me a bit of the aforementioned loo brush!
However, the trees provide a nutritious vegetarian food in the form of the monkey puzzle nut which is a good source of protein and apparently delicious.
The trees date back to the Jurassic Period when dinosaurs used to graze on them. They take a long time to grow to their 30-40 metre height and only bear fruit after 30 years!
The trees are native to South America and were worshipped by tribes who used to wait for the nuts to drop off the tree, then harvest and eat them as a staple part of their diet.
They are named monkey puzzle trees due to the fact that you have to climb like a monkey to reach the top but then the branches are so well armoured with spikes that it remains a puzzle as to how to harvest the cones. Those South American tribesmen obviously had time and patience and were well rewarded. Perhaps, after all, monkey puzzle trees are an asset and should not, in fact, be consigned to the oblivion that is Room 101.
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