Four things that scare the bejesus out of me

Semolina, tapioca, sago and blancmange. I would have added rice pudding, but I've had decent versions since I left infant and junior school that are at least edible, although it wasn't the way them b'stards made it.

Huge vats of sticky, grey ectoplasm ladled in to your dish by hard faced women as old as time. You could chop sticks on their faces. Or, in the case of blancmange, sitting there wobbling, looking for all the world like it's about to attack you.

You took your life in to you own hands entering the dinner hall. You didn't know if you were going to eat your so called pudding or it was going to eat you. It looked for all the world like the spawn of some yet undiscovered creature or maybe the devil himself.

"Eat your tapioca you little brat."
"I daren't."

I don't even know if tapioca and sago really exist. I've never seen it or even heard it mentioned outside the torture room that was our dinner hall. I reckon they took that big bowl of slops you used scrape your plate in to and boiled it up for the next day's semolina. They said it was going to the pig farm, in reality it was our pudding.

All the great deserts in the world (chocolate brownies, treacle tart, apple crumble and custard, sticky toffee pudding) and everyday they served us that filth. I was in my 20s before I realised having a puding could be a treat rather than a punishment for a crime I didn't know I'd committed.

The 1970s - one long decade of sadism.

<img src="http://s4.postimg.org/3unid0yn1/tapioca.jpg">

 

Was made to eat a bowl of tepid semolina at junior school - I'm still tracking down that bitch of dinnerlady that made me do it.

 

I remember vividly, must have been no older than 6, telling my mother I could no longer eat the school dinners as I was retching at the sight of the stuff. Eating out of those dusty separated tray things didn't help either. So from then on I had packed lunches, I've always been a very picky eater though.

 

I love semolina and rice pudding. Now sago....

 

I love all of those desserts. Especially rice pudding and chocolate blancmange.

 

I hated rice pudding at school but I always liked the blanmange and semolina.

 

I hated all that filth, too. Very few kids at our school could stomach the stuff. The teachers & dinner ladies tried putting us all on a guilt trip by saying how disgusting we were for not eating the stuff, when there were thousands of children dying of starvation in Biafra, who'd love the food.

 

Got taken out by a perspective client a few weeks ago for dinner at one of the celebrity chefs restaurants in that London and ******* Sago was on the menu I made a little sick noise when I saw it then had to hurriedly cover it up and pretend to be professional.

 

tapioca or semolina or sago was/is used as a building material in some hot countries. It has the same properties as concrete. Honest. Or have I got this completely wrong!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sago

 

I used to hate milk that you were forced to have. Left in sun and dust all over it. Then dirt in bottom of bottle. Warm sourly milk I still to this day will not drink out of anything right to the bottom, I always leave some in bottom, even Coffee and tea

 

Thanks JC - so I wasn't making it up -- sago used to treat fibre aaaaaaaaargh!

 

Cheese Flan, I cannot stand cheese and was forced to eat it at junior school by a dinner lady. Vomited all over the floor and her shoes. Cannot even bear the smell of cheese 40 odd years on from that day.

 

Horses

 

Now when I was at junior/infant school in the glorious pre milk-snatcher days the crate of little one third pint bottles of milk were stored in one one corner of the classroom right next to the main (6 inch diameter) central heating pipes. Warm sour milk - I still refuse milk almost fifty years later.

I am forever in the debt of a couple of classmates who readily drank the stuff - Milk comes a close third on my hate list Sheff U - Dirty L***s - milk

 

Playcentres. The other kids always seem bigger than my kids and bomb around it like it's the assault course on the Krypton Factor. Doesn't help that I once saw a little tot coming off the one at Yorkshire Wildlife Centre with a 2 inch gash across his forehead that was going to need quite a few stitches. I once stood there petrified watching my little girl charging round the one at the back of Brent Cross shopping centre and was shouting to her to be careful when I noticed there was a bloke at the side of me in a similar state shouting to his kid. It was that Reece Shearsmith off the telly. Incidentally, did you know that the League of Gentlemen all met at Bretton Hall College? I do like to think of the all having a night out round town. Probably explains at least half a dozen of their characters.

 

Spiders, scorpions, nuns & Crystal.

 

Dinner bag/dinner beard

The former occupation of my mother in law. And I can tell because she's a **** cook and a pain in the ring.

 

Naga chillies, tax returns, walking fast uphill and a certain poster on here.

 

The sensation of squeezing a sponge, the photos from the Facebook "go barefaced for cancer research", the release of a log of my Internet browsing history, DIY.