How to Piss Me Off

Angry? Me?

I HAPPENED across a post on the internet called How To Piss Off A Londoner.

It wasn't a very good article, including things that would piss off anyone - queue jumpers, litter louts, people walking slowly on busy pavements, that kind of thing.

Like no one living anywhere else in the world is bothered by queuing for 20 minutes only to have some cross-eyed oik with B.O. insert their body between them and the next person along.

And, yes, Mr Moron, please drop your Macdonald's carton with half eaten burger likely to attract rats right outside my house, I don't mind a bit.

People walking slowly on the pavement or, worse, ambling in the supermarket, annoy the hell out of me. I want to shout, GET OUT OF MY WAY, YOU DAWDLING DUNDERHEAD, but I'm far too polite and make do with a semi-audible tut.

But the article got me thinking about the things that do piss me off. First off, assumptions. I may be a woman of a certain age but I am busy all day long. I haven't yet broken out the Sanatogen Tonic Wine to sip with my Rich Tea biscuit as I fall asleep watching Countdown so don't assume you know what my life is like. I have a triathlete sister who represents Great Britain. She is 74. Tell her it's time she started to slow down at your peril.

I don't want advertisers telling me how I should be spending my money, assuming all I want to do is save for a funeral plan or sign away my house in some shifty equity release. I don't need a stairlift, a walk-in bath or a little gadget that picks up things off the floor for me because I can't bend down . When that time comes, I'll let you know.

Until then, I'll spend the whole lot on cocaine and toy boys if I want to. The fact that I wouldn't know cocaine from sherbet dab or that any self-respecting toy boy wouldn't come within 100 yards of me is irrelevant. I like to keep my options open.

As a baby boomer I am also pissed off with being blamed for all the perceived ills of the younger generation as if it's all my fault that they find it difficult to afford a house. The only way the better half and I could afford to get a foot on the housing ladder was by working every hour that God sent to scrape together a bit of money and then working our fingers to the bone to build it ourselves. Get rid of that £1,000-plus iPhone, cut down on the nights out, holiday in Bognor rather than the Bahamas and you're on the way to saving up for a deposit.

Then there are those black eyebrows with square corners (what IS all that about), people who repost any old crap on Facebook without checking it out, posts/emails/tweets without any punctuation, people telling me to cheer up it might never happen, butter too hard to spread on bread, impossible to open blister packs, people who don't say thank you for some little courtesy, dog shit on pavements, motorists who don't park in the centre of parking bays, people who drive two inches from my bumper and people who drive too slowly, unsolicited phone calls, wet spoons in the sugar bowl, people who continually check their phone when they're with you, reality TV...

...and a million other things that qualify me for the Grumpy Old Woman tag, but I'll leave it there for now. That Bargain Hunt won't watch itself and I have a packet of custard creams with my name on.

Before you leave:

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• Look in left column under Grounds For Divorce, Or Proof That I'm Living With A Madman for some short posts about the man I share my life with. (If you're reading on a phone it will be somewhere else - possibly at the top).
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