Spewdrops on Roses and Biscuits with Grit In

Toxic heavy metals and hard seats to sit in,
Brown toilet ‘packages’ that leave stubborn rings,
These are a few of my least favourite things…

My, my, my, we are in a bad mood, aren’t we? And by ‘we’ I of course mean ‘me’. Lately it seems I’ve had more than enough cause for irritation and irascibility, but I find in my current condition I simply don’t have the patience for penning time-consuming discourses on subjects such as colleagues who see nothing inappropriate in their expectations of a heavily-pregnant woman in obvious physical discomfort (ie: me) acting as their personal dogsbody. Plus I currently have the attention span and verbal agility of the child I hope soon to meet ex utero. So, I’ve delved into the rantings that have been pent up in my resentful little mind for years in some cases, hoping to achieve some catharsis and translation to the state of Madonna-like* serenity that is other people’s tiresome expectation of mothers to newborns. I’ll see the hardier of you at the other end of the post…

Bad driving. Gasp! You say I’m not the first ever person in the world to complain about bad driving? Well tough mammaries, I’m gonna do it anyway. Have you ever noticed how different cities seem to specialise in particular strains of bad driving? Well down my way, the prevailing transgression is the use of indicators not like a polite cough to inform you of someone’s intention to move your way when they’re quite sure it would not be an imposition, but more like an unexpected rough shoulder-charge before you crash winded to the ground. Apparently in the years since I passed my driving test I missed the amendment of ‘give way’ to ‘barge as barge can!’ in the road rules.

Warm seats. Don’t tell me I’m crazy – my neurotic posterior and I already know it. There’s just something about sitting in a seat still warm from the buttocks of a stranger that makes me cringe. Call it an overly-sensitive delineation of personal space.

Poorly-constructed underpants. Without wishing to encourage any stray fetishist pervs that may have come across this post (and who are shortly to be bitterly disappointed), I must confess I tend to buy underpants of the inexpensive, plain cotton kind. It’s one of those purchases I can’t bring myself to spend more money on, even though in this extortionate, profit-driven world such a seemingly simple item is still subject to the maxim “Pay peanuts, get underpants sewn by monkeys.” I find the worst thing about cheap undies is gussets that don’t fit where they should, which is not life-alteringly terrible in itself, but what really annoys me is that several years ago that ghastly crone Jeanne Little opined on television that only fat cows with big bums experienced that problem.

Not being allowed to use the word ‘opined’ in Department of Meat Products reports. Apparently it’s considered by our customers to be too toffy. So to avoid rubbing our education (which was required for the job in the first place) in anyone’s easily baffled and offended face, we’re restricted to bland alternatives like ‘stated’ or ‘said’. This may explain my propensity to pomposity here in this blog…

Spurious and idiotic explanations of the origins of words like sh*t and f***. What kind of (unjustifiably) self-satisfied loser fabricates such tripe? The kind whose creativity is limited to obscene and repugnant fan-fiction, I suspect. Worse still those who believe and propagate ‘Store High In Transit’ or ‘Fornicating Under Consent of the King’ when a half-decent dictionary will set even the most brainless of knuckle-draggers straight on etymology.

Those stupid signs you see in workplace kitchenettes. You know, the printed ones blu-tacked above the sink or next to the microwave that exhort everyone to clean up after themselves because ‘Your mother doesn’t live here!’ or, ‘The housework fairy is on strike!’ I don’t know about you, but I go to the kitchen for a break, not for edicts from someone you just know is one of those bossy, annoyingly perky people who take such things upon themselves, and whom you fantasise about punching in their irritating toothy faces.

People who don’t change empty rolls of toilet and hand paper at work. Yes, we have regular cleaners through our office building, but it’s not their job to station themselves in the toilets constantly topping up supplies and drying everyone’s hands with fluffy white towels like some downtrodden American washroom boy. I frequently wonder what the culprits find so difficult about taking a new roll of t.p. from the neatly-stacked pile and replacing the one they’ve stripped bare save for a few fluttering scraps. And why can’t they take the ten necessary seconds to load the hand-towel dispenser instead of leaving the roll of paper to become sodden and useless by the sink? Don’t they realise their mothers don’t live there?

Infantile psychoanalysis. This is a long-nursed grievance which thankfully hasn’t troubled me afresh since school, when doing something as innocuous as wearing purple or idly peeling the label off a drink bottle set certain ninnies to air-headed giggling before informing one smugly that “You must be sexually frustrated!” At twelve years old? You braying buffoons! Freud, whom I’ve long suspected to have been little more than a dirty old man, has a lot to answer for.

When the work sucks,
When the fools goad,
When I’m feeling mad,
I simply blog about my least favourite things,
And then I don’t feel so ba-a-ad!

*Do I really need to state I don’t mean the singer?