Friday, May 18, 2007
A few of my least favourite things
I stopped mid sentence the other day saying “if there’s one thing that drives me mad, it’s…” because I realised there isn’t one – others include:
1. Packaging – it has the tenacity of a bit bull terrier, repulsing all attempts to break in with nails, teeth and brute force and yields only when you’ve fetched a knife and inflicted grievous bodily harm; it’s four times the size of the contents: beribboned boxes with fancy writing don’t reduce the disappointment of finding 6 measly chocolates sitting brazenly inside, or the irritation of vitamin pills barely covering the bottom of the container; the sheer quantity of it is absurd – a printer already swaddled in polystyrene by Amazon is then bubble wrapped and re-boxed by the courier, all of which ends up in the garage, making the possibility of ever using it (the garage that is) to house the car even more remote; and I hate those infuriatingly shaped grip-resistant shampoo and household cleaner containers – you just want a quick splodge of Cif to deal with the stain on the floor but as you bend down it slips from your grasp and the splodge is neatly diverted to your clothes.
2. Skinny girls who delight in ostentatiously stuffing their faces when they’re out, while declaring they can eat absolutely anything and not put on an ounce, when in truth they don’t eat breakfast, rarely lunch and starve themselves for three days if they do put on an ounce. Why would they rather be thought lucky than take the credit for working their socks off for such a result?
3. Interviewers who allow their interviewees, especially politicians, to sidestep their questions with mealy-mouthed replies like “before I answer that I’d just like to say” and then go on to make the speech they’d planned on making from the beginning. It seems so feeble not to be able to shut them up and insist they answer the question – isn’t that their job?
4. People who say “to cut a long story short” and then don’t. Or those whose generosity knows no bounds in providing you with every detail of the background to their story, including their own checking references to prove that something couldn’t have happened on the Tuesday as they first told you, or the Monday in fact, because they’ve just remembered that Mrs Marsh was visiting her daughter when it happened, so it must have been Wednesday, because that’s the day she always visits. Honestly, you don’t have to go to so much trouble for me, really.
4. Elusive pens. How is it possible to buy pens in fours or fives, every couple of months and still have days when the house can’t throw up a single one. Sure there are any number of crappy ones - the free or abandoned ones – they sit obediently in the holders dotted about the house and never go missing, or even attempt to hide as a sort of test to see if I might just miss them - yesterday I had to use just such a one to write a birthday card - but all the good ones, the carefully chosen for their fine writing ones, are nowhere to be seen. I’m not accusing anyone of course, but I do wonder if my loved one has the same problem.
5. Calling from another room. When the kids were young and forever asking or telling me something from somewhere else, I automatically responded with “don’t call from another room”, but having told my loved one this rule, he now uses it against me – now hang on, it’s my rule for others, it doesn’t mean I can’t do it.
6. Instructions which, to save manufacturers from printing in 27 different languages, consist of a fuzzy little drawing with arrows pointing in vague directions. One word is worth a thousand pictures to me. I like sensible instructions like: ‘take the first left after the big white house, turn right at the wiggly shaped roundabout, and keep going till you come to the traffic warden dishing out parking tickets…’.
I’m tagging Riviera Writer and Gillie B to tell us what drives them mad.
1. Packaging – it has the tenacity of a bit bull terrier, repulsing all attempts to break in with nails, teeth and brute force and yields only when you’ve fetched a knife and inflicted grievous bodily harm; it’s four times the size of the contents: beribboned boxes with fancy writing don’t reduce the disappointment of finding 6 measly chocolates sitting brazenly inside, or the irritation of vitamin pills barely covering the bottom of the container; the sheer quantity of it is absurd – a printer already swaddled in polystyrene by Amazon is then bubble wrapped and re-boxed by the courier, all of which ends up in the garage, making the possibility of ever using it (the garage that is) to house the car even more remote; and I hate those infuriatingly shaped grip-resistant shampoo and household cleaner containers – you just want a quick splodge of Cif to deal with the stain on the floor but as you bend down it slips from your grasp and the splodge is neatly diverted to your clothes.
2. Skinny girls who delight in ostentatiously stuffing their faces when they’re out, while declaring they can eat absolutely anything and not put on an ounce, when in truth they don’t eat breakfast, rarely lunch and starve themselves for three days if they do put on an ounce. Why would they rather be thought lucky than take the credit for working their socks off for such a result?
3. Interviewers who allow their interviewees, especially politicians, to sidestep their questions with mealy-mouthed replies like “before I answer that I’d just like to say” and then go on to make the speech they’d planned on making from the beginning. It seems so feeble not to be able to shut them up and insist they answer the question – isn’t that their job?
4. People who say “to cut a long story short” and then don’t. Or those whose generosity knows no bounds in providing you with every detail of the background to their story, including their own checking references to prove that something couldn’t have happened on the Tuesday as they first told you, or the Monday in fact, because they’ve just remembered that Mrs Marsh was visiting her daughter when it happened, so it must have been Wednesday, because that’s the day she always visits. Honestly, you don’t have to go to so much trouble for me, really.
4. Elusive pens. How is it possible to buy pens in fours or fives, every couple of months and still have days when the house can’t throw up a single one. Sure there are any number of crappy ones - the free or abandoned ones – they sit obediently in the holders dotted about the house and never go missing, or even attempt to hide as a sort of test to see if I might just miss them - yesterday I had to use just such a one to write a birthday card - but all the good ones, the carefully chosen for their fine writing ones, are nowhere to be seen. I’m not accusing anyone of course, but I do wonder if my loved one has the same problem.
5. Calling from another room. When the kids were young and forever asking or telling me something from somewhere else, I automatically responded with “don’t call from another room”, but having told my loved one this rule, he now uses it against me – now hang on, it’s my rule for others, it doesn’t mean I can’t do it.
6. Instructions which, to save manufacturers from printing in 27 different languages, consist of a fuzzy little drawing with arrows pointing in vague directions. One word is worth a thousand pictures to me. I like sensible instructions like: ‘take the first left after the big white house, turn right at the wiggly shaped roundabout, and keep going till you come to the traffic warden dishing out parking tickets…’.
I’m tagging Riviera Writer and Gillie B to tell us what drives them mad.
