For as long as I can remember, I have always hated this fruit with every fibre of my being. There are several reasons for this…
1. The colour of it is offensive to me. I’ve never been a fan of the colour ‘orange’.
2. The mess. Oranges are incredibly messy. You can’t just peel the damn thing and eat it – the peel comes off and then there’s all this…pith business going on. Bits and pieces go flying everywhere, and a piece of peel inevitably goes missing, only to be found months later. Disgusting.
3. The stickiness. It’s impossible to eat an orange without being reduced to a sticky-handed mess in their wake. It’s their way of making sure they leave their legacy well after their demise.
4. The smell. Oh my god, the smell. You know the way in Roald Dahl’s book ‘The Witches’, he describes how children smell of kittens and talcum powder and all sweet things to normal people, but to witches, they smell of innards and cat vomit and all sorts of wretched things? Well, that’s how I feel about the smell of oranges – most people love the smell, they think it’s fresh and delicious, but to me, oranges smell of death.
I try to avoid oranges wherever possible. I don’t like touching them, and if someone starts eating one in my presence, I generally have to move away – especially if I’m eating too, as the smell puts me off my food immediately. Most of my friends are aware of my fear of the orange, and are pretty good about not eating them around me.
But every so often, someone decides to have a little fun with me…
Attack of the Oranges I
It was my 27th birthday, and I strolled into the office, full of the joys of life….but what was this on my desk? A present? A lovely present of chocolate perhaps?
No!!
It was a crate of oranges.
1. The colour of it is offensive to me. I’ve never been a fan of the colour ‘orange’.
2. The mess. Oranges are incredibly messy. You can’t just peel the damn thing and eat it – the peel comes off and then there’s all this…pith business going on. Bits and pieces go flying everywhere, and a piece of peel inevitably goes missing, only to be found months later. Disgusting.
3. The stickiness. It’s impossible to eat an orange without being reduced to a sticky-handed mess in their wake. It’s their way of making sure they leave their legacy well after their demise.
4. The smell. Oh my god, the smell. You know the way in Roald Dahl’s book ‘The Witches’, he describes how children smell of kittens and talcum powder and all sweet things to normal people, but to witches, they smell of innards and cat vomit and all sorts of wretched things? Well, that’s how I feel about the smell of oranges – most people love the smell, they think it’s fresh and delicious, but to me, oranges smell of death.
I try to avoid oranges wherever possible. I don’t like touching them, and if someone starts eating one in my presence, I generally have to move away – especially if I’m eating too, as the smell puts me off my food immediately. Most of my friends are aware of my fear of the orange, and are pretty good about not eating them around me.
But every so often, someone decides to have a little fun with me…
Attack of the Oranges I
It was my 27th birthday, and I strolled into the office, full of the joys of life….but what was this on my desk? A present? A lovely present of chocolate perhaps?
No!!
It was a crate of oranges.
A special gift, left to me by my dear German friend Alex – she’d cycled to work during the night and left it there for me! I did laugh about it, I have to say – after I’d found someone who’d move the crate as far away from me as possible.
Attack of the Oranges II
I really was asking for this one, I have to say.
I’d been to the cinema to see the film ‘The Unborn’ (not a classic by any stretch of the imagination) with Liadain and Mark. Liadain loves going to these films, even though they freak the hell out of her, and she watched most of the film from behind her hoodie. I decided to have a little fun with her, and send her texts reminding her of freaky moments in the movies, resulting in her asking her housemate to vet any texts coming from me and delete them before she could accidentally read them.
I decided to go a step further the next day – something I would come to regret. Liadain left the office for an hour or two for an appointment, and in her absence, I decorated her desk, chair and locker with printed off scary photos from the film. On my way home, someone suggested Liadain might decide to play a trick on me in revenge – a revenge that could involve the dreaded oranges. I wanted to go back and get rid of the photos before she could see – but this was impossible that particular evening. I heard nothing from Liadain all evening, and I wondered what awful revenge she might inflict on me.
The next morning, I approached my desk with much trepidation. This is what greeted me…
Oranges. Everywhere. On my chair. On the desk. On my computer. In my locker. Behind folders. EVERYWHERE. Leaving their stinky trace in their wake. The horror was…indescribable. And there was millions of them – it turned out that Dunnes were having a special deal on oranges that day, so Liadain walked out of there with 2 bags full of the evil things.
The boys had to move all the oranges from my desk, and even then I kept finding oranges hidden in random places. It was the horror that just kept on giving. The oranges were safely stored on Claire’s desk, and in her boredom, she began to draw faces on them, resulting in The Orange People.
These Orange People lived in our office for a good few weeks, until the cleaning staff decided they really had to be thrown away.
Now I’m just waiting to see if there’s an Attack of the Oranges III….gulp.
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