Hard boiled lolly lady.

I'm scouring every toy shop in Brisbane for a water pistol that is small enough to conceal in my purse. Rest assured, this does not herald any ideological shift towards crime and anarchy (although in moments of extreme frustration that has been considered). No, this water pistol is for a very, very specific mission.

At the chamber music series, to which I subscribe each year, there is a dumpiness of a woman who occupies the seat at the end of the row. It is this woman who must be stopped, with my water pistol, when I find one. In four years, no one has done anything about her. I can see no alternative: in 2008, I must act.

At each and every concert, she waits for the moments when the theatre hushes, the pianist's hands poise and those beautiful first notes sound. Only then does she lean forwards so her taffeta skirt rustles and the heel of her right shoe scrapes on the parquetry floor.

As beads and bosom fold over blubber and bulge, she delves into a raffia handbag at her feet for a plastic container filled with hard boiled lollies. Each lolly is wrapped in a little clear cellophane wrapper. They may be barley sugars or they may be butterscotch. I don't care.

Then, slowly, tediously, she unwraps one of the lollies from its crinkling cellophane and plops it in her mouth, slurping as it slides over the tongue into oral depths unknown. For the rest of us, those magical seconds of aural anticipation are utterly destroyed.

What is worse is knowing that hard boiled lolly lady could easily unwrap her sweet before the pianist walks on stage. Instead, she chooses to wait. This selfish act is entirely premeditated and unbeaten in cunning execution. Even renowned theatre trolls such as the whisker scratching fat man, her honour Judge Bangle Banger and Consumptive Methuselah, all fall silent to listen for hard boiled lolly lady.

I'm never sure whether the artists can hear her. Even if they cannot, they would definitely know there has been a disturbance of some sort at row J. All we row J-ers sit there trying to hide our collective embarrassment as the curmudgeon of seat 1 munches.

Between concerts, I dream that one day, when this sonic terrorist is mid crunch, I will quietly stand and taking the tiny water pistol in a steady hand, I will strike with the ease of an eager trigger finger, blasting all over the lacy blouse and uncaring carb crammed face.

Perhaps you think a water pistol too extreme. Maybe so. I suppose I could tactfully offer to anaesthetise her for the duration. That would be simple and effective. Nevertheless, the water pistol will make so much more of a statement. Theatre goers of the world unite!

Better dead than red.

It's not a phobia.

When you ask people about their earliest memories, most will talk about family or Christmas or places of warmth and happiness. My earliest memories prescribe a life long abhorrence of tomatoes. At three, I howled at a kindergarten picnic because no one would take me seriously when I said I didn’t want tomato sauce on my bread roll. My anti-tomato sentiments are certainly not the acute or ephemeral whim of a crazed zimble.

The reason for the tomato's existence is totally beyond me. Why this fruit should ever have succeeded on the rocky slopes of evolution is a conundrum of the highest order. The reality is that the tomato is a pestilential blight on the earth and should be forced onto the endangered species list as quickly as possible with a view to its total annihilation.

I hardly need to expound the deficiencies of the tomato. Even if anti-tomatoism is not yet their reality, most decent and sensible people have some intuitive understanding of the problem. They know their love of the tomato is a mere illusion.

There the tomato sits, all red and shiny, plump and inviting, whilst secretly hiding a squelchy horror worthy of Beelzebub himself. Its pretence of ripeness is a shallow ruse with sour immaturity and post-date putrefaction its norm. Unforgiving of an even slightly blunt knife, the tomato spurts in the eye of the unwary.

Of course, the greatest and most obvious deficiency of the tomato is its philosophical bent. Here is a fruit that pretends to be a vegetable! The tomato is living a lie! It has none of the sweetness of the strawberry, the sunniness of the orange or any of the practicality of the banana. The tomato, if it were going to ‘be’ anywhere, should have stuck to fungal decay on the floors of remote jungle valleys instead of plonking itself into the baskets of innocent grocery shoppers.

From the bitter, bruise-if-you-blink skin to the slimy seeds of its hollow core the tomato is a rotter.