My usual disclaimer: I have been busy / on holiday / can’t be arsed. I just don’t seem to have the time to do anything at the moment. Our house looks like burglars arrived and brought their shit and scattered it about, we have a laundry pile that is truly staggering and might even have a base camp; and our cars are fetid environments that even the kids sniff a bit when they enter – and they genuinely don’t care if you kept a dead cat in there for a week, they seem immune to scent. So, everything is taking a hit at the moment AND I start a new job in September so I guess I am going to have to give up personal hygiene or eating biscuits if I want to find the time to blog…
So, here is a bunch of stuff that is annoying me at the moment – no real reason, just collected them and jotted them down.
- Pointless Road Signs Falling rocks? What, exactly, can I do about it? Drive faster? Slower? Weave? Pray? Open the sun-roof and try and catch the bloody things? What? Another one is the deer jumping sign…again, what the sweet fuck can I do about that? Cover my car in bear scent? Point a shotgun out the window? What? I want to know. I saw another one the other say that said: bridge. Great, thanks for confirming what I can see and will shortly be driving over. High winds! What can I do? Open the windows? Drive into it? Take the sails down? Stating the bleeding obvious…
- Teabags in the sink I get it, they drip. But if you put them into something that is designed to collect water they will eventually be drawn to the plug hole where they will block it and then you’ll have to put them into they bin…and they’ll drip. I know taking them to the bin is a himalayan trial akin to moving a large rock over burning coals, but just try…
- Dish Soaking If you don’t want to do the washing up, just say.
- Fingerprints on Glasses When non-glasses wearing people hand me my glasses (normally my kids) they pick them up by the lens because, after all, they are the least important components of a pair of glasses…or worse, they put the glasses down on a table lenses down rubbing off the expensive (and as far as I can ascertain) utterly pointless computer screen layer of stuff that apparently makes looking at computer screens easier…or something. I fell for that one the first time…but not the second. Shouldn’t have gone to SpecShafters.
- Inside-out Laundry Everyone in my family (apart from me) takes their clothes off as if they are saving a drowning man, so I spend an extra twenty minutes doing the laundry because everything is inside out – arrrrgghhhh!!
- Coins for Shopping Trolleys I am normally pretty good about remembering to bring a 2chf piece when going to the supermarket…but sometimes I forget and then I have to go to the cashpoint and get some money and then go into a shop and ask for change…and then they refuse, because they haven’t got a lot of change, they’re not a bank so then I have to buy a packet of chewing gum (and suddenly they have all the change in the world – I think Wrigleys profits are 50% people breaking a note) so I can temporarily put it into a shopping trolley. Why would I ever steal a shopping trolley? Take it home? Leave it outside the flat? Put it on the balcony as an ornamental feature? If I really wanted one then 2chfs seems a small price to pay (BTW 2chfs is approximately £95.88 at current exchange rates) to secure an ugly wire box with wheels on the bottom that don’t really work that well on a pavement and even in the supermarket don’t really go in the direction you want. Is 2chfs really a deterrent enough to stop people joy riding on trolleys? How empty are their lives that they can glean some joy from riding in a shopping trolley?
- Google Maps on iPhone Wierdly, I know how to get around where I live because, you know, I live here. But if I visited – say – Germany, I wouldn’t have a scooby-doo where anything was in Hamburg or Berlin because…I haven’t been there before. Ah, but I could use the map app on iPhone! Then I can find the nearest coffee shop / bank / hardware store easily…but you can’t because you’ll come home to a bill so large that you’ll have to go on the run, grow a beard and eat raw rabbits. So…why have maps at all?!?!? What is the bloody point of an app that would only really come in useful when you are somewhere foreign. Bloody stupid mobile phone operators, they are a collective bunch of simpletons that I want to beat with rolling pins…to the Nokia tune. The fucks.
- Hair Trigger Petrol Pumps A lot of the pumps here have a little catch so that you can put the nozzle in and lock it so that while it fills your tank you can do other stuff…like check Facebook…or select some snacks from the petrol boutique (Urgh) or have a fag (saw that once in France – I pulled in and then pulled out again and spent the next 5 or 10 kms looking in my rearview mirror for a plume of flame 2 kms high…). But in France or England a lot of pumps have a trigger that when you squeeze it beyond a certain point it stops the flow of petrol…sometimes the flow of petrol is so slow that you continually try and squeeze the trigger just too much and it keeps cutting off and that become old very, very quickly.
- Long Leads for Dogs When I am running people walk dogs along part of my route. I don’t mind, it’s a free country (ha!) but some people have extendable leads so that their dogs can roam and at certain times of the day the footpath is a veritable cats cradle of the bloody things. Normally the dogs that are required to roam are small dogs. In my experience the smaller the dog and the longer the lead the stooopider the dog and the owner. So, when I run I trip over the stoopid dog or the fucking lead. If I have just run 10k and this happens then one day I will flatten a dog and frisbee the fucker out into the lake and when they say: ‘You killed my dog!’ I’ll say, ‘ what fuckin’ dog?’
- Flies Just because. I know they break down stuff and do loads of ecosystem bullshit that is important, but they’re bloody annoying.
Mr Shev's Blog 
About road signs, you could have thought a little before ranting .
Falling rocks : sure you can’t do anything against a rock falling right on your car, but this sign is not meant for that . You got far more risks, in a curve, to bump into a rock that has fallen before . So this sign tells you : ” Beware, there might be rocks on the road after each curve : drive slowly” .
Same thing for deers crossing : if you go slower you have more chances to avoid a jumping deer .
Same thing for strong wind : if you go fast there’s a risk that a violent and sudden gust makes you leave your lane, or maybe the road .
Those three signs say one thing : slow down . But as the French don’t just believe and obey what they are told by authorities, they write the explanation instead of just “slow down” . Those signs are adapted to French mentality .
About the other kind, indication signs like “bridge”, they are adapted to American tourists .
I like ranting.
I object. The French are rational and curious, thus the pictorial sign answers the question as to why one should slow down before it is asked. Simple and quick.
Yes, but try to do it when the subject doesn’t come from your lack of reasoning, unless you don’t mind if people make fun of you . Don’t be a George W, it’s better to be a Groucho .
You’ve really got a thing for road signs, huh?
I don’t mind if people make fun of me, whatever people need to get through the day – it’s about them, not me.
Pardon me, it’s too much for me . My father was a road sign, and because of people like you he lost his job and left this world .
4, 7 & 9 – couldn’t comment but I am so with you for the rest of them. My husband manages to half turn his clothes inside out, ie just one leg or one arm, and is incapable of turning (no steps required) around to place the teabags in bin without dripping tea all over the sodding floor.
I would also like to add your commenting system is annoying as it won’t let me go in as my blog name and I have to go in via twitter. Not life threatening but annoying all the same. 😉
With you on every single one of them. I’d add cyclists in garish spandex who refuse to acknowledge traffic lights (and no my dad wasn’t one) and more importantly pedestrian crossings.
What about hair trigger showers – they in hotels B & B and so on are sooooo painful
Great blog – really enjoyed it
I agree fully with the Google maps thing. Woulda been neat in India and in Australia, but instead I just write directions on a post-it.