Most sane or most in denial?

I've noticed that off all the blogs I read, most of the writers have a therapist, or if not an active relationship with one, at least a diagnosis of some kind which suggests that their mental health is a cause for concern occasionally. Partly I suspect that this is due to the fact that many of them live in the US, which does seem to have a more open and honest approach to the treatment of mental health problems unlike the UK where we still have to be convinced that it's not just attention seeking and fecklessness that causes us to falter under the pressure of our increasingly unwieldy expectations. But partly I suspect that there is something about the introspectiveness of assessing the way you think that either appeals to writers or leads those who otherwise would not write to contemplate capturing their thoughts in an attempt to record the processes through which their minds slink when they are left to their own devices.

I am, perhaps shortsightedly, not under the care of a mental health professional and don't feel the need for any more introspection that this blog affords me - an outlet for my thoughts, obsessions and petty annoyances that doesn't really require any outside input or feedback. Occasionally I will attack the Boy Wonder with a topic of frustration and, if he fails to deliver the response I require, I will fill in his part of the conversation as though that in any way provides an endorsement for my rantings. To his credit, he usually goes along with this charade, obligingly parroting back the lines I feed him with an admirably attempted facsimile of outrage, and fortunately this seems to suffice, for the time being, to keep my brain happy.

Miller Band

We were just surprised by an old episode of Have I Got News for You (I'm assuming Wimbledon is to blame for no other reason than that it's been buggering up the Diagnosis Murder/Murder She Wrote slot all week) which made many references to the Milliband brothers. This re-ignited the fury I felt at the time about the lack of Steve Miller Band jokes in reference to the Labour party leadership election. Admittedly, there is the occasional half-hearted reference to their other brother Steve, and I wasn't expecting long built-up references to any of his lesser known songs, but I was disappointed that nobody took it any further, despite the fact that the world of politics is the perfect backdrop to a line about space cowboys and the pompatus of love.

Other people and the unpleasantness of dealing with them

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Tony Joe White at the Jazz Cafe, which once again proved that it attracts one of the most appalling audiences of any venue I've ever been to. The support act they had 'chosen' was not only one of those rubbish whiny girls who sings in a pseudo sexy voice which bears no relation to their speaking voice and drone on endlessly about their feelings, but also actively bad, so once she had buggered off we went to find a suitable spot in the crowd. It was sold out, so there were loads of people there, and it was a bit of a crush but we found a spot which wasn't behind too many gargantuan specimens from which we could almost see the whole stage.

Unfortunately for us, we were also immersed in the 'crowd' meaning that we were forced to endure the unpleasant habits of those who share our taste in music. The first was a guy who was standing behind me, so closely behind me in fact that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck (which, due to the methods of my childhood optician gives me the creeps anyway) and almost every part of my body was being touched by his. As if that wasn't creepy enough, he then interrupted a conversation that the Boy Wonder and I were having to begin an annoying chat with the Boy Wonder about his previous experience of seeing Tony Joe White.

He actually apologised before interrupting, which demonstrated some understanding of the social convention of accosting a stranger, but when the Boy Wonder said that he wasn't surprised that he was a little late he started grilling him on every time he had been to see him and how late he was each time. The Boy Wonder gracefully extricated himself from the situation, but I was still left with this guy leaning on me, until after the second or third song the Leaning Man managed to hit me round the head whilst clapping and I asked him to move back.

He seemed strangely put out that I had asked him, despite the fact that it must have been obvious that I couldn't actually move properly with him basically standing where my shadow should have been. But, having removed one source of other people's hideousness, we were still subjected to downright horrific personalities of several hundred other people, from the 'I'm so crazy' guy behind us who couldn't shut up to the group of twats who found themselves completely incapable of just standing and enjoying a gig without constantly rearranging themselves.

Tony Joe White was awesome, but once again we were reminded that UK gigs seem to attract the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel in terms of other attendees. There are quite a few gigs coming up over the summer that I'm really looking forward to except for the fact that I suspect there will be other people at them, ruining them and making me cross, which in turn makes me feel like a fun-hating old crone which makes me even more cross. Is it really so much to ask that people get a drink, find a place to stand and then do so quietly and without moving too much for the whole gig? Or do we really have to go back to New Orleans to find a good crowd?

Knitting

Four days ago I took up knitting - I watched a video of a lady showing you how to do it, and I managed a fairly passable bit of knitting. I then knitted the next day and the day after, finding it at once compulsively enjoyable and incredibly satisfying and this morning I woke up with a constant pain in my right hand which seems to have developed as a combination of my extensive weekend knitting session and my tendency to sleep with my hand scrunched up under my chin.

I'm quite annoyed about this - not only was I enjoying my knitting, but I distinctly remember both my grandmothers knitting almost constantly well into their later years apparently without ever suffering.

Admittedly, they had both been knitting for years, so I obviously need to build up some stamina before I can even begin to compete on their expert level. In fact, my paternal grandmother lived in what appeared to my juvenile mind at least to be an entirely knitted house. She could knit almost anything, but mostly chose to use those skills to produce bizarrely coloured, excessively huge woollen extravaganzas which were apparently designed for children of much more unusual limb configurations than my brother and I.

So, although I am a mere beginner and clearly should expect some discomfort in the muscles that apparently I only use for knitting (presumably these were in a state of near atrophy until four days ago), I am a little aggrieved. What I thought would be a foray into the world of 'stitch and bitch' where people without grandchildren reclaim the art of knitting in a terribly trendy way has actually turned into a rather nubbly rectangle of knitting and a pain in my hand which makes me feel like I should be paying more attention to cod liver oil adverts and trying to include bran in my diet.

Super Glue

In spite of (or subconsciously perhaps because of) the explicit and terrifying warnings on the outside of a tube of Super Glue, and in spite of the fact that I am independently aware that Super Glue was originally designed and used for gluing skin together, for some reason whenever I actually use Super Glue I managed to glue my fingers together. Admittedly, often I am gluing something which requires me to hold the two pieces together until the glue has at least begun to set, so it's not entirely surprising that it happens, but the fact that I consistently forget to check whether my fingers are becoming a part of the item that I am trying to fix is a cause of some consternation to me. Fortunately, I now have proper fingerprints again after last week's attempt to fix the stupid freezer drawers left me with suspiciously smooth patches on several of my fingertips...

Susan Boyle

I've been completely astonished by the way the media have handled Susan Boyle. The Boy Wonder and I saw her original audition on X Factor, and at the time we wondered why everyone assumed that because she wasn't physically attractive she would also be unable to sing. Despite the success of thousands of plain, odd-looking and downright unattractive people in all areas of expertise, it seems that there is now an assumption that we are all complicit in a mind-set that cannot contemplate the idea of someone who doesn't conform to the media's narrow idea of 'beauty' as being anything other than worthless, talentless and worth only pity, scorn and derision. I particularly don't like the way everyone who mentions her in the media includes the rest of us in their prejudice, acting as though a person who didn't assume the woman couldn't sing couldn't exist, and anyone who said they didn't is obviously lying. I resent being lumped in with a bunch of witless idiots who have apparently never realised that the correlation between physical attractiveness and talent has been entirely fabricated by Hollywood and advertising executives.

Ageism

When the sun shines and the days are long, it seems pointlessly perverse to continue the winter tradition of staying in bed till it gets dark watching TV, so I make more valiant efforts than usual to scour our hand-delivered copy of our local parish magazine for events that might get us out of the house and encourage us to appreciate our local environs. Usually there are plenty of activities that suit my requirements for entertainment and learning, but without fail I find myself thwarted and angry when I read the 'small print' and discover that pond dipping is only for accompanied children, that bug spotting is for under 9s, and that only families are welcome to come along to 'spring fun' featuring biscuit decorating, ladybird hats and other stimulating-sounding fun. I feel aggrieved that this kind of thing is only for kids - I'm sure I could turn up, but a) I'm not sure the Boy Wonder would want to be the only 30 year old accompanying his 28 year old wife to an event intended for small children so I would have to go on my own and b) Kids ruin stuff when you're trying to have fun - they scare animals, make noise, get leakage on stuff I might want to touch and generally demand that they should be at the front/first to go whenever something good happens, so people like me are supposed to 'hold back' and let them, even if I have been waiting longest. So screw kids, and screw the people who put on events which even have a suggested age group - all I want is to crouch down and poke around looking at bugs and pond life without people acting as though I should have had enough of that when I was a kid.

People I used to think were tits, but have had to re-think my opinion to a certain extent

I like to think that I am quite open-minded and willing to change my views on things given a compelling argument to do so. I also know that whilst I can hold a grudge on someone else's behalf (there are people who have upset the Boy Wonder who I have never even met, and lucky for them because I would smack them in the teeth if I did), I am possibly even a little too forgiving of people who have pissed me off on the grounds that I often can't remember what it was that they did, or I can't be bothered to maintain a frosty silence and want all the confrontation over with. So there exists a surprisingly long list of people who I had thought were idiots, who have made inroads into their idiot rating in my book, and although some of them will never really get out of the mire, I give them credit for jobs well done. The richest vein to plumb for people fitting this category are those who appeared in 'Extras', the Ricky Gervais series, and the most notable of those was Chris Martin purely for the line about having to get home as Gwyneth was making him fish fingers for his tea. One of the main reasons I had placed him firmly in the 'twat' category (apart from the obviously wrist-slitting dullness of his 'music') was the ongoing childlike refusal to talk about his relationship with a woman who is more famous than everyone in his band put together, and the fact that he broke this cock-ended rule so that he could be in 'Extras' for 30 seconds made me think he must have some secret sense of humour which I had previously believed to have withered from lack of use over the time since he started looming around as a professional misery. Also benefiting from their appearance on 'Extras' were Ross Kemp, who's affability in the face of being portrayed as a total dick-bag made him all the more likable, and Shaun Williams who I had never really given much thought to but becomes increasingly endearing as 'Barry from Eastenders' in the show. Never Mind the Buzzcocks is also responsible for quite a few radical changes in my opinion of people - Mark Ronson always comes across as such a stroker when he's talking about music, but was surprisingly funny and self-deprecating on Buzzcocks, making him almost as annoying for not being as annoying as I thought he was as he was for being annoying in the first place. There is one person who has managed to plumb such low depths of my esteem that his redempion really only took him up to the level of utter twatishness - James Blunt. There is a very good reason that he will always be rhyming slang in our house, but his apperance on Sesame Street singing 'My Triangle' to the tune of one of his whiny little ditties about how hard life is officially rescinded the requirement to spit whenever his name is uttered, upgrading him to qualify for derision and scorn rather than disgust and horror.

Do I use the toilet incorrectly?

I mean, there must be something wrong with me because I don't think I have ever managed to use one of those auto-flushing techno-toilets they have at airports without activating some kind of stealth setting, the purpose of which I can only imagine is to humiliate the user into such a state that they are incapable of committing any violent acts once airborne. Who is it that decided that any movement indicates a desire to flush? Someone with a psychopathic hatred for humanity, that's who.

I love my massive studio-style headphones

They are the only thing that stands between my co-workers and certain death. Because we have moved to an office which has no cafeteria and no staff room, in fact nowhere at all to get away from your desk without getting in your car and escaping somewhere more luxurious, I am constantly subjected to the noises of my colleagues crunching, sucking, slurping and talking through mouthfuls of food. The sound of this process ranges from vaguely annoying crisp eating by people who seem to be involved in ongoing competitions with themselves to see how large a stack of crisps they can ram into their gob in one go, crushing them up with their mouth half agape to those who willfully open a mouth full of half-chewed slop to share some worthless piece of information with someone who doesn't care, and certainly doesn't have enough interest to want to see the future contents of their stomach. I am sure that I make some noise when I eat, but at least I have some understanding of the size of my mouth, and don't consistently try to test its limits with just one more crunchy treat which will render me incapable of chewing with my mouth closed, thus subjecting everyone around to the sound of me snorting and grunting my way through the entire mouthful and possibly end in the unplanned consumption of a colleague's fist. But, fortunately for my co-workers, I have massive headphones and a wide selection of entertainment just waiting inside them to relieve me of my bile at their lack of consideration and unashamed gluttony. They don't know how lucky they all are.

The mystery of Clamato juice

What is wrong with people? I simply cannot fathom the kind of mind that either drinks a glass of tomato juice and thinks 'Hmm, this is a tasty and strangely filling drink - what would really enhance it is something fishy' or eats a clam and thinks 'there's something a little too solid about this - and once you have realised it needs to be runnier, the natural choice of thinning agent would be something like tomato juice.' It is an unholy combination - clams and tomatoes may well go together in a bisque or soup, but a drink? Really? I mean, I'm not really a fan of tomato juice as a drink, despite an enduring love for tomatoes in almost any other form, but I can envisage how it could be enjoyed - I don't have to like something to understand what others see in it, but clamato juice is where I draw the line. One of the worst things about it (apart from the concept, the taste, the unforgivable lack of respect for both clams and tomatoes and the possibly apocalyptic nature of the horrific combination) is the 'Red Eye' which consists of a beer with a shot of clamato juice in it - I genuinely cannot imagine a less appealing beverage. I can't really drink beer much now due to being old and incapable, but when I did drink it I loved the beeriness of it. I never ever grasped a nice cold Heineken, sipped of the froth off the top, and then thought to myself 'If only this had a fishy-tomato aftertaste it would really add something to the deliciousness'. But it seems that this is just what someone has done, and quite honestly, why the first person who tried this actually bothered to tell anyone else what they'd been up to is beyond me. I can only assume that this was some kind of 'Jackass' style stunt whereby those involved were actively trying to concoct a drink which would make their friends throw up. Or possibly someone trying to poison a person allergic to shellfish by sneaking it into their tomato juice onthe grounds that you would be less likely to notice clams in tomato juice than you would in, say, a gin adn tonic. Either way, there seem to be no redeeming features of this drink - the Boy Wonder and I tried it when we were in Canada after asking a waiter what the hell it was, and three years later, the memory of it still haunts me, as does the look on the waiter's face. It reminded me of the look of smugness my brother used to get when he had oversalted his chips - he didn't like them either, but tricking me into eating them amused him greatly, and I can only assume that the phenomenon of Clamato juice is a similarly juvenile prank which has really got out of hand.

Twitter - Shitter more like

I just don't get it - I know that it's supposedly a great marketing tool, and that you can use it to send up to 140 characters of information about your life to any number of people who might not otherwise know what you were up to all the time. But I don't get it - I can't follow anyone unless I know their e-mail address, and if I knew their e-mail address then I'd probably just e-mail them to ask what they're up to. I know my brother 'tweets', and I am constantly reading long earnest articles about how important it is to avail yourself of all the social media you can get your hands on lest you miss some important snippet of information, come late to a discussion about your niche or find that someone has tweeted something you disagree with and you're not the first to comment. I am sure I will get into it - it's my first day after all, and because I am doing it for work, I can't really just get fed up and jack it all in, but I really can't believe that it's more efficient just to e-mail the people you know and tell them that you're 'feeling slightly sick' or any of the other gems I have seen on there so far...

Shopping at Christmas

Yesterday I went to Tesco. I should have thought about it and not gone, but we needed to replenish the alcohol stocks for Christmas as the in-laws are coming over, and I thought I could pick up some light bulbs and Christmas crackers as well. Now, I know that supermarkets have several reasons for keeping all the drinks far from the front door - risk of theft, the hope that as people wander round the shop they will get distracted and buy something else too, not to mention the pretence of relevance which they maintain by keeping 'seasonal items' by the front door - but as far as I am concerned, any place where you are expected to put eggs in your trolley before you get 4 cases of Bow is severely misunderstanding good shopping practice. So, savvy shopper that I am, I loaded up with booze which I then delicately accessorised with a light sprinkling of fruit and veg in order to give the impression that I am not a raging alcoholic. Then I searched for the light bulbs - I started in 'Household Goods', checked the aisle-end displays in case they were hidden there, took a brief spin round the pet food aisle, and then cracked and asked a member of staff. 'They're over by the entrance, in the non-food section where the electrical items are'. I had not realised that light bulbs now came under the heading of 'electrical items', but by this point I wanted to jam light bulbs in my eyeballs, so I just said 'I'll kill myself if I have to go over there again - fuck it, we'll have Christmas in the dark.' If I see her again on one of my many fun jaunts to Tesco, I will apologise as she looked as though she was scared I was going to just abandon my trolley and collapse in a quivering, crying heap. But I pressed on, unsuccessfully trying to make small talk with the surly checkout lady, wrestling my over burdened trolley back to the car and realising only when I got home that I hadn't got the buggering crackers either...

Ironic Driving

This is a phenomenon which seems to be spreading, and is mostly noticeable on my journey to work, during which time I travel from a 30 zone, into a 20 zone, back to 30, up to 60, slowing to 40, back up to 60, then finally 30 as I get closer and come through a residential zone, and during this time I will occasionally find that I am behind the same person almost all the way. Occasionally this person will shoot through the 40 zones at 50 miles an hour, but then maintain that speed in a 60 mile an hour zone. Now, I appreciate that sometimes people aren't confident driving at speed, and that the speed limit is a limit, not a target, but when a driver displays such flagrant lack of regard for these facts by speeding at inappropriate times, it makes me think that they don't really understand the national speed limit. They see the sign with the black line across a white background, and they aren't really sure how fast they're allowed to go, so they toddle along at about 50 just in case. I don't really understand it as there are only two speed limits really - 60 on a single carriageway and 70 on a dual carriageway in a normal vehicle. Presumably, those who have taken extra tests to be allowed to drive a vehicle which has different limits should really have learnt what those were when they took their tests. So why is it, that on a clear road with no obstacles and no adverse weather conditions, someone who just hooned through a residential area at 45 mph suddenly gets all shy and sticks to 51 on the A-roads. Another practice which I can't fathom is that of over-taking at either terrifying speed, terrifying proximity or both, only to then start driving slower than the person you overtook was driving. Why? What on earth makes you risk your life to overtake if all you wanted to do was drive slower than the person in front of you? It does make me more confident in my own driving abilities - because I passed my test when I was about 22 and everyone I knew had been driving for longer than that I always felt as though I was catching up and that I was the only person on the roads who didn't know what I was doing. This feeling stayed with me until the beginning of last year which is when I started to drive to work, meaning that instead of driving approximately once a week, I was now driving twice a day, which has done wonders for my confidence, but has so dented my confidence in other people's driving that I think my overall road confidence is just about balanced out as I exercise extra caution to avoid being the unfortunate victim of someone else's witless inability to wait, watch or just drive properly generally. All the same, I do like to imagine a world where everyone drives with a bit more care and really thinks about whether their personal desire to get somewhere really outweighs their desire to live, own functioning legs or sleep at night without the soul-gnawing knowledge that their twattishness has had a horrific impact on someone else's life. Until then I will just be content that I wasn't the spanner I saw the other day who indicated left, but instead of making the turn, pulled out to his right instead, still indicating otherwise - he must dice with death on a daily basis, I just hope it's his own.

5 Books I definitely do not love (part 5)

Well - what horror has been reserved for this slot? I have gone with the only book which not only made me really angry, but made me have strong feelings of dislike for the author, someone who I had previously thought was cool. 5. Silent Bob Speaks - Kevin Smith This book really, really annoyed me. I had been a long-time fan of Kevin Smith's films, and I would still say that Clerks is one of my favourite movies, but the man behind them came across in this book as a complete James Blunt. I could put up with the slightly vile way in which he referred to his wife on the grounds that she puts up with it and him and so has obviously made her peace with being called 'the woman who lets me fuck her'. I could put up with the sycophancy - we all have people we admire, and sometimes it is easy to be rapturously caught up in your personal relationship with them and fail to realise that you come across like someone with an ulterior motive for banging on about how fabulous they are. But what really annoyed me was his claim that Michael Moore stole one of his ideas, and then his passive-aggressive 'Hey, if you don't want to give me credit for coming up with an abstract concept, never acting on it, and then noticing the similarities between a half-formed idea I had and a campaign you worked hard on, that's fine man, whatever.' line on it really wound me up. If you have something to say to someone, say it. Don't write about it in a book, don't overplay your involvement to try and undermine someone else's achievements, and don't expect everyone to bow down and be grateful that you're not 'taking action' when your claim to their achievements is minimal at best. I actually read this book a good couple of years ago and as I had borrowed it from a friend, I haven't been tempted to re-read it to ascertain whether it gets better with time, but I do remember being angered by it, and for a book which I was fully intending to enjoy, that's quite rare. I will often convince myself that I like a book, against all the evidence, because I like the author, the premise or the subject, but this is the only book I remember failing so spectacularly to please me on any of those counts. Which is a shame - I don't like discovering that people I admire aren't people I would like to spend time with. I think that's worse than suddenly being forced to concede that someone who I have always considered to be a total tit might have enough redeeming qualities to be reclassified as a partial tit instead, which I am please to say happens more frequently than the other way round. Which gives me an idea for my next list....

I never realised, but I don’t really like films

Talking to our wee Scottish friend last night I realised that I don’t really like films. I have known problems with actors: I can’t tell the difference between Al Pacino, Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman leading me to be really confused when coming across ‘Meet the Fockers’ as I couldn’t understand why the Dad kept changing clothes. I don’t recognise most actors, so if they have slightly different hair, clothes or accent, I can’t make the connection with the person who I have seen before. But, even apart from the fact that I have no recollection skills, there’s something about the format of films that makes me want to know whether it’s going to be good before I watch it. If something’s not going to be great I want to know, and if it’s not going to be great then I don’t want to waste my time watching it for two and a half hours. When the Boy Wonder wanted to watch ‘Lord of the Rings’ I refused to go to the cinema (although he wasn’t that keen either, what with the hating people, crowds, shops/shopping centres and all) so we ended up watching it on the small screen at home. I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but everyone kept going on about how good it was and I felt quite optimistic when we sat down in front of the gogglebox. However, after an hour (the Boy Wonder claims it was only half an hour) I was beginning to lose the will to live. Fortunately the Boy Wonder was feeling the same, and he was the one who actually called a halt to our watching when he said ‘God this is boring isn’t it?’ to my immense relief. Nothing had happened in that whole time, and I was buggered if I was going to waste any more time on a film which had been spun out not only over three hours, but over three more films apparently for the purposes of leaving huge segments where no plot was required. I would have to be very drunk before I sat in front of that again. But it’s not just really long films, any film which is predictable and has an ending which I can predict from within half an hour riles me. As do films which rely on CGI and impressive special effects rather than plot – I will never understand how people can say ‘The plot was pretty crap, but it was worth seeing for the special effects’ because as far as I’m concerned, you shouldn’t even make a film if you can’t portray scenes properly, so no allowances made for that. And films which don’t adequately explain what’s going on piss me off too – I sat through the whole of Transformers only to discover that the big show down was a fight scene in which it was almost impossible to work out who was good and who was bad. I also hate films where the plot is based on an entirely flawed premise, and they spend so much time not mentioning the huge hole in the storyline that you assume it’s because there’s some kind of brilliant twist only to get to the end and find out that it was just a really poorly thought-out set up for the action, which retrospectively makes no sense if you actually spotted the point at which they deviated from sense. However, I watched Lucky Number Slevin over two years ago, in Canada and really loved it, to the point where I not only remember who was in it, but also what happened, and I would still watch it again. That’s about as good an endorsement as any film has ever had from me, and being as Spinal Tap is the only other film I can think of that falls into that category, that gives some idea of how exacting my standards are. Or possibly just that my interest is only piqued by clever voilence and immature humour - whichever makes me sound deeper.

Inflicting your music on the public

Further to my post about the annoying tendency of people to be oblivious to the impact their overly loud conversation has on those around them at gigs, I feel I should also condemn a practice which is borne of a similar lack of courtesy but with the opposite effect. I went to an event in London last week, and on the way there I was treated to the sound of some child, around 10 or 11 I’d guess, with his mother, who was definitely old enough to know better, playing some kind of MP3 player out loud on the train! I was gob smacked – I am aware that the yout’ love to whip out an MP3 player loaded with crappy R ‘n’ B, lame guitar bands and the latest ring-tones, but I have never seen one with parents in tow. Do they really think that everyone in the train carriage wanted to listen to their choice of music? Are they the only people who are unaware of fact that all those other people would have brought their own MP3 player had they wanted to listen to music on the train? Is it legal to kill someone for inflicting some warbling half-wit on me while I’m trying to read? I remember when the Sony Walkman was the height of sophistication, and there used to be signs on public transport asking people to ensure that they weren’t listening to their music at such an ear-splitting level that the leak from the headphones would disturb other passengers. It didn’t occur to me that one day, I would be held to mental ransom by a child deciding that what they want is more important that anyone else’s desire for a quiet ride. I am well aware that my main problem is really a public lack of consideration – they could have been playing music I love, and I would still have felt that it was an inappropriate place and time to share it. I also feel very hard done-by that I am considerate to the point of stupidity and if others aren’t going to play fair then the system doesn’t work. I recently spent a frustrating five minutes walking behind a man who was dithering his way to the station because there wasn’t quite enough room for me to pass him without (in my mind) implying that he was slow. I once ended up crying because I had gone round the corner to buy croissants for breakfast, and then I let someone go first at the bread display because I didn’t want to reach across him (even though I had been there before him), only to then watch him take every last croissant in the shop. In the latter case, it was more the rudeness of him that upset me – I am not that pathetic that I get croissant withdrawal – because I was trying to be nice, and he went a ruined it and made me feel like an idiot for doing so. And what’s the point? If I am nice to someone who not only doesn’t appreciate that I have been nice to them, but also breaks the chain of niceness, then it all stops working. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, I was brought up too well to stop saying thank-you to surly sales assistants, holding doors open for people and helping old ladies get their shopping off buses. But one day I really will snap, and if you are the twat with the box of shit music forcing it on me in a public space, then expect pain to rain down upon you, or at least a couple of warning stares, a discontented huff and then a polite request to turn it down.