Thank goodness February has gone. Good riddance. It’s been dark and rainy and windy and wet and generally damp and dismally poo. No wonder I’ve caught an acute case of GOM disease… G.O.M. standing for “Grumpy Old Man”. The only way to cure it is to have a jolly good rant about the many things I’m currently finding particularly annoying. Little irritating things like people talking in cinemas during the film, noisy children with parents who refuse to control them, people wearing loud headphones or me typing the word ‘garbage’ on my computer and my spellchecker automatically changing it to ‘rubbish’. Every time… It’s so annoying! Once I’ve complained about these things, I shall hopefully be cured. So, many apologies to you, dear reader, because you’re about to be on the receiving end of a March Humphrey Rant. How many of these annoy you too?
Let’s start with the car… top of my road-rage list are people who take up two parking spaces and people who tail-gate way too close behind you. Both offences should be criminalised. So too should seagull poo on my car windscreen (very difficult to remove), but it’s hard to enforce laws on birds because they fly away before you can stick a yellow offence sticker to their backs. I’d also like to ban all drivers who have pimped-up cars with deafening cut-down silencer roars, go faster wings on the back and loud bass bins on the car audio. They’re often coloured bright red (their cars I mean, but sometimes their drivers as well). As punishment, they should be forced to listen to the worst pop song in the entire world for 12 hours solid at enormously high volume. There are lots of candidates for the worst song. My favourite (if that’s the right word) is “Dance with Me” by the former TV newscaster Reginald Bosanquet from 1980, but you could substitute “The Birdie Song” by The Tweets or Noel Edmonds’ “Mr Blobby” song if you like – both of which should carry health warnings.
Next is day-to-day living… How many times has this happened to you? You’ve done a huge shop at the supermarket only to exit the store and realise you’ve forgotten the ONE thing you went in to the store to buy in the first place? This is normally something boring but indispensable like a pack of Hoover bags or a particular type of battery. So maddening—and it happens to me so often!
A further thing… I normally quite like people, but not when they’re wearing aggressive ‘in your face’ trousers. This should be a capital offence. Loud flashy shirts are alright, but orange and green polka dot trousers make me fill ill. That’s why I no longer watch golf on the telly.
Here’s another: Trying to remove the “reduced bargain” sticker from the bunch of flowers you bought to give away as a present. I think stores do this deliberately to discourage us from being mean. They stick the reduced tags on with super-sticky glue that won’t come off unless you completely ruin the packaging. While on the subject of stickiness, why can’t I ever find the end of the Sellotape roll? Perhaps it’s a commercial trick by opticians to remind me I need a new pair of glasses.
Other irritating things that occur more and more include walking into a room and forgetting why I walked in 30 seconds before and reading my favourite book and feeling good and the mind wanders and I suddenly realise I’ve no idea what I’ve been reading about over the last ten pages. Another of my pet peeves: I’m in a restaurant, and the waitress comes and fills up my glass of wine every two minutes! I have to tell her to please stop—I’ll fill my own glass when I want it! And how about when someone leaves the door slightly open. I want it closed or open—not vaguely ajar. Beyond irritating!
Computers and mobile phones are naturally responsible for much frustration. Like when I’m in a great hurry to finish something and the laptop screen goes dark blue and tells me that Windows is now updating and I must not turn anything off. After three hours I’m on Update Number 21 of 36 and have lost my hair and my mind. And how about when my printer wastes even more ink when it tells me it’s about to run out of ink? That isn’t Technology—it’s Torture! Aaaagh!
Also, mobile phones should be banned from the breakfast table (actually all meals), and I hate those ‘Free Wifi’ set ups in hotels because you still have to log in and it never works and I feel like throwing my tablet out of the window. Lastly… have you ever charged up your mobile all night only to find in the morning that you forgot to plug it in? Yes, me too! And don’t even mention the words ‘Email Spam’. I remember when Spam used to be served with egg and chips and not dribbled onto my screen.
Enough! OK—I’m feeling better now.
