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Hell: alarm call; Monday morning; missing sock; snapped shoelace; mirror image; scales’ reading; blunt razor; bleeding lip; dripping blood; burnt toast; mislaid keys; flat battery; school-run chaos; red lights; traffic jam; congested rat-run; camera flash; car park full; late arrival; jovial colleagues; witless quips; hearty backslaps; cluttered in-tray; constant phone calls; endless emails; interruptions; stupid questions; crass complaints; crazy deadlines; silly blunders; cocky PA; criticism; innuendo; midday meal queue; cold potatoes; indigestion; pm stupor; pointless meeting; lost agenda; empty ballpoint; broken pencil; feigned interest; ghastly goals; tedious targets; stifled yawns; mounting in-tray; empty out-tray; matters pending; false farewells; bulging briefcase; parking ticket; flat tyre; jammed jack; oily fingers; evening rush hour; slight collision; dented bonnet; cross exchanges; late homecoming; piles of junk mail; overeating; over-drinking; throbbing head; dull TV; bedtime boredom; lumpy pillow; restless mattress; sleepless night; dawn chorus; Tuesday morning.
Alan Millard
Hell is a great hall like unto a place of commerce, where each of the damned stands before a gate which is called Checkout, every doomed soul having always seven others before it, and each of those seven has forgotten items or tries to pay with an outdated credit card or drops a jar of jam, so that the line moves not forth for all eternity, while the succubi, the girl-demons, who guard the checkout gates, wander away to discourse with one another, and to each damned soul it always seems that the adjacent line has fewer souls in it, but this is never the case.
Hell is a room where the damned soul is confined eternally with four French intellectuals.
Hell is watching a repeat-loop of the Eurovision Song Contest without beer, peanuts or anaesthetic.
Hell is fruitlessly filling in application forms for early release from it.
Brian Murdoch
Murdoch publishes the only paper.
It’s always Mary Whitehouse on Page 3.
Publicans pour nothing but Budweiser.
The state religion’s Scientology.
The in-laws drop in every night for dinner.
Museums are crammed with velvet Elvis art.
Private Eye prints excerpts from your diary.
The other people are all Jean-Paul Sartre.
Chris O’Carroll
Hell is: being force-fed with pot noodles by Peter Mandelson in the departure lounge at Luton Airport while listening to the complete works of Jeffrey Archer read aloud by Janet Street-Porter with musical accompaniment by Yoko Ono.
Watching a continuous loop of Ingmar Bergman films, without subtitles.
Canary Wharf, populated by Millwall supporters, conspiracy theorists, Big Issue sellers, reality-tv rejects, care in the community failures and fanatical followers of L. Ron Hubbard.
Any international airport.
Cornwall, for its diabolical ripping-off of visitors, and Brighton, ditto.
Wondering, and waiting to find out, if by some no doubt Freudian, self-incriminating error, you mistakenly sent that email to the wrong person.
Learning that you did send it to the wrong person, and discovering what the exact consequences will be.
Suffering those consequences.
Waking from a happy dream.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Hell is: the realisation that you have to telephone Customer Services and that there is no alternative.
A phone-operated options menu.
Six-digit pin numbers.
‘We are aware you’re waiting. Your call is important to us.’
The bank’s choice of music for its telephone queue.
Howmayihelpyou?
Customer Services.
Individual helplessness in the face of an impersonal monolith.
Knowing that bank will not deliver the required pin/information/statement.
The sense of shame after losing one’s temper on the telephone to an incompetent bank clerk/tool of the system.
D.A. Prince
Hell is: Needing spectacles to see what you look like in the spectacles you are trying to buy.
Needing glasses to find the ones you have just put down.
Remembering only half your PIN.
A small town in China.
The family visits that last too long.
Washing the team’s rugby strip.
The mirrors in the fitting room.
That unfortunate movement with your zipper that you know has to be reversed.
Cold, undercooked fish.
The examination you are always failing in your nightmare.
Your nose telling you you have stepped where the neighbour’s dog has been.
The blue screen and dull click when you turn on the computer.
Shirley Curran
No. 2601: Misinformation
Time to resurrect an old favourite: you are invited to submit snippets of misleading advice for tourists visiting Britain (150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2601’ by 18 June or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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