Grumpy Old Woman

Is what I am definitely turning into. I've realised recently that, on my trudge through daily life, I have been mentally compiling a list of all those little irritants that mount up into one giant, mahoosive ball of FURY and FRUSTRATION which is likely to elevate my blood pressure to a monstrous height and keep it there.

Maybe it would help if I got them off my chest...
Okay here we go (and in no particular order) THINGS THAT IRRITATE THE LIFE OUT OF ME..

Old people who use their supermarket trollies as zimmer frames and lean on them with their astronomical arses sticking out, stopping dead in the middle of an aisle and gazing blankly around them while a huge queue builds up behind.

Our cats' propensity for killing the local wildlife and bringing it home to share with us.

Drivers who don't indicate on roundabouts and then make finger gestures at you as they almost kill you.

People sinking pints of lager at 7.30am in the bar at any airport.

The way a man cannot leave a tv remote alone for a moment and flicks through the channels relentlessly during the ad break.

Carrots.

Cat hair that sticks to your clothes.

Trying to prepare a meal while supplicating furry paws reach up to the work top and attempt(sometimes successfully) to hook the chicken down onto the floor...

Anyone who says 'Ciao' and is not Italian.

That ridiculous ad where women sit in a cafe discussing their bowel movements and sharing constipation remedies - yeah right!

WheN YoU Start tYping WitHOut ReALIsING THaT caPS LOcK IS oN

Liz Jones

Ludicrous statistics, dreamt up by the media to frighten people eg "The bad weather has cost industry £600 billion in the last two days" Nice and vague and unsubstantiated eh?

All teenagers' inability to speak clearly e.g. "likewossfordinnermumawwwwnotpastaagain..."

Sanctimonious people who have no children but are world experts on parenthood

Sanctimonious people who have small children and, when you are ranting about your teenagers' latest indiscretions, say loftily "Oh Vienetta will never do that sort of thing!" (Vienetta being all of 2 years old).

Joe Pasquale's voice

People with unreadable handwriting - it's LAZY!

Celebrities who refuse to criticise anyone or anything or ever, ever say anything negative about any damn thing at all (ever). "Oh no, I rilly rilly don't mind not winning the Oscar - I'm just soooo grateful to be nominated.." oh yeah?

Celebrities who insist that their spookily smooth and immobile faces are "gosh, just down to good genes and healthy eating, I guess" (snigger)

Celebrities who insist that their spookily small waist size and skeletal frame is "gosh just down to good genes and lots of exercise, I guess" when they have been papped leaving a Lipo clinic two days previously.

People who look down on Heat Magazine and swear they never read such tosh....c'mon, fess up - we all love it really!

Celebrities who are interviewed about their summer holiday reading list and spout crap like "I've almost finished reading 'A la recherche du temps perdu', so I shall be taking that to Mustique with me"...Must be the title of Jackie Collins' latest tome surely?

Scrapheap Challenge. I can't STAND it! The Shah, by contrast, LOVES it with a capital L....WTF is that about? I mean given that he's never so much as owned a Meccano set in his life?

Top Gear - all those braying blokes :-(

The hairy one off Top Gear who has all the personality of wet cardboard and who (inexplicably) built a house out of Lego (I mean a real house) and then knocked it down again....hmm - that was worthwhile, wasn't it?

Richard Hammond's hairdresser

Celebrities (again - sorry) who "confess" their past sins to fellow celebrities "exclusively" for their column or their tv show...stories such as "I have to admit I took drugs, and I just want to speak out so that I can share my experiences with the world and offer my support to fellow sufferers. And this has nothing to do with the fact that the News of the World was about to break the story so I had to get in quick...honest. Er, could you just make the cheque payable to..."

Particularly if those celebrities are squeaky songstresses.

And (dyed) blonde.

Drivers who get in the right hand lane at traffic lights and don't indicate right until the lights have changed, so you get stuck behind them when you just want to go straight on.

The current British obsession with Health & Safety. Some years ago, at my kids' first school, a mum suggested that boiled sweets should be banned from the Summer Fete "in case someone chokes on them". How many generations of children have beseiged the sweet shops of old (can you imagine having a proper sweet shop now? It would probably get torched by the pc brigade) to buy gobstoppers and pineapple chunks...and how many of them have choked to death, I wonder?? For more of the same, I direct you to the very excellent "May Contain Nuts" by John O'Farrell.

Actually, all political correctness.

I have to stop here or I could go on for ever...I have a feeling that this is a list I may be returning to....