Things that make you go grr

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It's that kind of Monday. Nothing awful has happened; there was no life-shattering event over the weekend. (I smoked a bit too much and tried to work out exactly what we were trying to do in Afghanistan.) There is even a bit of tentative sunshine. But still, I am in the class A Monday dumps, that kind of teenage yeah yeah blah blah whatever everyone can just fuck off mood that sometimes comes along and grabs you even when you are over forty and thought you were done with all that.

I generally don't hold with moods. Come along, I say to myself, in my best Mary Poppins voice; you are not living in Chad. Spit spot. But we can't all be little miss sunshine every day, and so I thought I would indulge my inner grumpy old woman and make a grumpy old list of the things that really annoy me. And then you can post your own lists on the comments section and all the bile will be out and tomorrow will be butterflies and bluebells.

So here is my list of things that really piss me off:

Things that don't work.
There was the crisis with the computer of course, but that was mostly my fault for pouring a glass of water over the keyboard, revealing to me that I could not live life without the use of the L key. But my new mobile telephone, which I have treated well, has died on me for no reason, and all my telephone numbers are trapped inside, and everyone is furious because they think I am avoiding them when in fact I have a broken telephone and until I go all the way into Aberdeen and get a new handset there is not much I can do about it. Sometimes, after a big storm, the internet does not work either. I have an enduring fear that someone will just come along and break the internet, and then where will we all be? These things drive me mad not just because something which should work is not working, but because it makes me realise how dependent I have become on technology. I lived for twenty one years perfectly happily without an internet or a mobile telephone. Now I seem incapable of surviving for ten minutes without them and I fear that reveals a tragic character flaw.

The people who stole the word 'disinterested'. It no longer means that you may observe a situation neutrally because you have no horse in the race; it means uninterested. I mourn its loss and if I ever find the felons who looted it they shall rue the day.

The expression 'pan-fried'. What the hell else are you going to fry something in?

My secret solitaire addiction. And that's all I am going to say about that.

Restaurants that serve disgusting food. Amazingly, they still exist. It is actually quite hard to make something taste really nasty; it's almost as much effort as making something taste good. An awful lot of effort is still being given to churning out very nasty dishes.

Ugly fashion. When I am told that this season I MUST HAVE a cobalt blue jumpsuit, I want to punch someone in the nose. And while I'm on the subject, which fashionista decided that Chloe Sevigny was the high priestess of cool? I have never seen her wear an outfit that I like. Don't even get me started on Stella McCartney.

People who ring me up and ask if I would like to have my doors and windows replaced at no cost to myself.

The use of the word like to indicate I said/thought/did. I'm like STOP IT NOW.

Pious people on the wireless who insist that disapproving of homosexuality is a 'matter of conscience'. Bigotry is bigotry, however many fancy clothes you dress it up in.

Dick Cheney.

My hopeless habit of leaving something on the stove, going away to do something else, losing track of time, and then sniffing a terrible burning smell coming from the kitchen and rushing in to find that my heavenly ratatouille is now a charred suppurating mess stuck to the bottom of my favourite pan, which will never be the same again no matter how hard I scrub it.

Pilling. And moths. Half my cherished cashmere cardigans are covered in little bobbles and tiny holes; I look at them and want to cry.

Huge conglomerates who hire actresses to put their names on absolutely disgusting scents, which are then sold at forty quid a bottle. There are about ten truly great scents in the world, and there is no need to waste time and resources on hideous new synthetic ones just because they say J-Lo on them.

The slow death of British pig-farming. (Buy British; save the pigs!)

Ready meals.

The fact that the battle for Helmand Province might never be won, and even if it is, at enormous cost in blood and treasure, it may not make very much difference to anything.

The term 'anti-ageing', especially when applied to cosmetic creams. Who decided that getting older was a crime?

The misuse of the apostrophe.

Grumpy old women like me banging on about all the things that make them grumpy.

Ah, better now. I hand the field over to you.