Round Them All Up in A Field And Shoot Them

I’m having a bit of a break from Aristotle and I’ve finished my book about Ukranian trolley buses (Riding Icarus by Lily Hyde).  I am never going to the Ukraine thanks, not even in a magic bus.  I am going to treat myself to a cup of tea in a minute and go to bed in my lovely, lovely clean sheets instead, which will be brilliant.  I’m only staying up now because Oscar has woken up three times this evening in quick succession and I’m trying to make sure he is really asleep before I venture sleepwards myself.  I really don’t want to be woken up by a squeaking child trying to break his own leg in his sleep again tonight thanks.

I am now ridiculously tired and my Word page is doing weird things which is making all my lines of text look really tiny,even if they aren’t.  I expect if I fiddle about with lots of formatting menus I can rectify it, but I honestly can’t be arsed, even though it is really, really bugging me quite a lot in that; ‘I know it shouldn’t bother me, but it just does,’ kind of way. 

 

I have a lot of things that get me like that.  Stuff that can’t be helped.  Stuff that I should just chill out about and not spend precious mental time writing stiff letters to imaginary people who may or may not be willing to help me, but who I am pretty sure if I ever sent such imaginary letters to, would laugh uproariously before setting them alight in an upturned dustbin lid.

 

One of the things that really bugs me is when the volume on the television shoots up when the adverts come on in between the programmes.  At first I thought it was my ears, but it bugs Jason too, so unless we’re sharing a mutual ear hallucination it’s unlikely.  Then  I thought it was just us being weirdly paranoid and a bit mad old ladyish, but apparently it isn’t.  I was mooching about on the BBC News website the other day when I read that it is one of the things that the television controlling important officey people get the most letters about.  People are concerned that it’s a public nuisance and that their neighbours will award them Asbo’s, particularly when a CILLIT BANG! Advert comes on sandwiched between some gently soothing Morse and his lyrical strings.  Apparently they’re so concerned that there will be new laws about it soon which mean that if the advert people make super shouty adverts they will be taken outside and shot, quietly, with a silencer while we squirt them with CILLIT BANG. 

 

Hoorah say I, who is only liberal about things like starving people, people living under harsh military dictatorships and the question of free mittens on the NHS for the under fives.  It turns out that in other things I am a draconian Nazi in full colour, training extensively for my upcoming starring role as World Dictator Extraordinaire. 

 

I think the lady who parks half way across our drive every other day because she presumably thinks I’m never going to get over my phobia of driving and driving instructors should be stapled to my front door as a warning to other uncaring parkers.  I think that our current headmistress, who spends so much time worrying about the children becoming knuckle dragging reprobates with amoebic brain cells because they wear hooded cardigans but won’t fund story sacks should be incarcerated in a giant iron hood for a week whilst being forced to listen to the complete Thomas The Tank Engine oeuvre, read by an illiterate six year old.  And that’s only for starters. 

 

Don’t tempt me on the subject of elderly people who think that just because they’re old they’re allowed to say and do what they like including pushing in front of harassed middle aged women with three kids in the Co-op (it’s luck you silly cow.  You’re not bloody immortal, as I will only be too happy to prove to you).  And let us never mention the stupid woman who rang up claiming to be from the bank and wanting me to give her all my personal financial details, who then got upset because I refused to believe she was from the bank until she gave me some proof.

 

Other things that I let bother me that I shouldn’t include:

 

• People allowing their small children to randomly squeeze and fondle produce in supermarkets, which they then don’t buy.  I don’t want to buy Wensleydale with Jacinta’s thumb prints in thanks.

 

• People asking their children to ‘stop doing that Bethany darlin’ please…’ in that tone of voice that means: ‘You know I’m so weak willed that I’m going to let you carry on doing that Bethany, even if your bad behaviour escalates to the point where you try to stick a skewer sideways through your brother’s head and there are twenty other people queueing up to show you the meaning of the naughty step.’

 

• People who work behind the counter in the Post Office stopping to have a ten minute chat with a customer when they’ve finished serving them, even though they’ve got diabetic pensioners queueing out the door and down the road, fainting into the gutter in numberless hordes.  Apparently these things can’t be rushed because it is a ‘community service’.  No love.  That’s what I get for stabbing you in the eye with a pen on a chain when you’ve kept me waiting for forty five minutes while you chat about begonias.

 

• People who say: ‘With all due respect..’ just as they’re about to say something about you that is so disrespectful that it is awe inspiringly awful.  They then get upset if you get upset, foolishly believing that the phrase: ‘with all due respect’ acts like some wonder vaccination for acts of gross rudeness and stupidity.

 

• The fact that pants rarely come in packs of five any more.  It’s all the fault of that brazen hussy on the M&S adverts who can’t speak properly, and tantalises you with pictures of delicious food to then make you weep that when you rush to the fridge you’ve got some old Parmesan and an out of date Muller Light instead.

 

• The fact that if you have more than two children you will always have to buy multiple packets of everything in supermarkets because nobody caters for odd numbers except Captain Birdseye who sells fish fingers in bags of such size and quantity you can feed everyone, even if you’re The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.

 

• The man across the road who cleans his car more than he talks to his wife.  It’s sexual, the amount of attention he lavishes on that car.  It’s like watching porn. Ewwww

 

• Mr. Tumble from CBeebies (my mum saw it for the first time this week and summed up my thoughts exactly: ‘I’m sure he’s very nice, but I wouldn’t let him near my grandchildren.  It’s not right.)

 

• Marmalade

 

Round them all up in a field and shoot them.  That’s what I say.  Either that or reintroduce compulsory national service for the over eights.