Tuesday 17 July 2012

Things that annoy me

I am in fairly good spirits mentally so it seems an odd time to write about things that are annoying me but the list has become quite long and I need to vent my spleen. Apart from being deceptively uncomfortable physically I really am quite a happy soul. I promise.
1. PPI adverts. They are constantly on Sky. They have overtaken 'have you been in an accident that wasn't your fault' or when we first got Sky, the repetitive adverts for loans. They are constantly appearing on the children's channels too which is ridiculous as they are not old enough to have taken out a loan or mortgage so it upsets me that they are subjected to the incessant questioning. I wish I had taken out PPI so I could make a claim and use the money to carry out some urgent home repairs but I really don't think I ever have which is terrifically annoying considering how many loans and credit cards I have taken out during my time.

2. 'She's made a full recovery' thin celebrity pictures. It appears that no matter how ill they were and how bad the addiction was, as long as they have had their hair done and are incredibly thin they are deemed 'fully recovered'. Is it just me on the fat side of the fence wondering why being skeletal is a sign of good health? Sarah Harding is the latest but I'll take any of them, Mischa Barton, Lindsay Lohan even Kerry katona. Let's examine the evidence. Drug addiction usually makes you quite thin anyway - a dramatic loss in appetite is the only thing i have ever been able to discern as a possible 'pro' to drug use. So why, upon their triumphant return to the limelight, post rehab do the press have to use their weight as a sign of well being. Surely it should be the reverse? We should start saying 'ooh she's put on a stone and had her hair done, she is clearly off the coke/meth/heroine'. It is just a thought.

3. Facebook updates. Moaning, incessant updates about how hard someone works or how much their job sucks or how many hours they have spent in the fricking office are getting on my wick. Here is a news flash. We just do not care after the first few. In the beginning there is sympathy. It isn't that nice being stuck at work at all hours of the day and night but after the millionth update we really dont give a flying rickety f*** about how hard you work. If you want to become an official martyr please go and work for a charity or something worthwhile. If your job is for a corporation only intent on making more and more profit then please don't even for a minute think that anyone gives a damn - you are a cog in a wheel - suck it up. The week before my wedding I was working until 10pm every night; at 6 months pregnant I worked until midnight and had to be back in the office for 8am the following day - and these were not unusual hours and yet did I take to FB to moan? No. Of course I didn't. It hadn't been invented yet.
The same is true for ridiculously over indulgent emotional outpourings of someone's love for another. GET A ROOM. Or better still, use the technology you are currently gushing to the world on and instead ring, text or even email the person you are sickeningly in love with and, here's an idea, tell them. You could even be very old fashioned and write it in a card. You know that I don't 'do' public emotions. I don't expect everyone to be like me and only tell their partner they love him if he brings me food in bed or he gives me money - I understand there are people out there who say it to each other at the end of every sentence but for god's sake stop involving other people in your gushing affairs. In fact I can include Twitter on here too. I do hate to agree with my mother but the use of the word 'love' has been undermined by its overuse. Gok Wan professes his love for strangers almost constantly. It is ridiculous. How can you possibly love someone with whom you have only ever exchanged a few tweets with via the internet? I like Sarah Beeney and her husband who never even use the word love. It is genius. They actually are in love. They don't need to start shouting about how they feel to the world. I mean it's just not bloody British. So, from now on I would urge you to encourage the repeat offenders of work moaners and gushing lovies to stop. Let's stamp it out now. I would like to add here that I am more than fine with people being happy, sad, ill, annoyed etc etc. I am not trying to erase all emotion, just make people think about other FB users before they press 'post'. A simple thought process of 'is this update the same as the ones I have written for weeks on end about how hard I work or how much I hate my job?' or 'is this post likely to make someone gag or vomit slightly in their mouth due to it's gushing nature?' if the answer to either is 'yes' then it would be kinder for everyone if it wasn't written. It will only take a few minutes of time and could save an awful lot of upset.

4. The Olympics. I am not trying to piss on anyone's parade but the sooner this bloody farce is over the better. I tolerated it for a while. I even became excited last year when I thought we might be able to rent out our home for ridiculous amounts of money due to our relative proximity to the games(I was quickly disillusioned of this fact) but now, everywhere we look there are signs asking us to politely 'bog off' whilst the games are on. The tube stations are awash with requests for us to 'make alternative arrangements', roads tell us not to use them during the games - my favourite just writes off the whole of Central London, telling us not to venture in whilst the games are on and if you do defy the sign, there are specific roads only to be used by people involved in the games which would result in a £100 fine if you accidentally used them and were not 'official'. companies have been told to make people work from home or relocate entirely for the duration of the games - the list of inconveniences goes on and on. My mother taught me not to bite the hand that feeds and I can't help but feel the whole vibe is a tad ungrateful. We are here all year round, for years and years and years, paying our taxes, being squashed on the tube, tutting to ourselves in queues, waiting for delayed trains, sitting in untold number of traffic jams, enduring hose pipe bans, rubbish not being collected, irritating tourists, surly bus drivers, foxes, dog shit, rats et all and now, all of a sudden it's 'thanks for everything but could you just piss off and not make any trouble'. It is just blatant rudeness. And do not get me started on the endless torch passing. It is dull now. Enough already. Also the constant and faintly ridiculous 'official sponsors' of the games. I have yet to see an official condom sponsor but there must be one - every other conceivable product or service has become officially linked to the bloody games. I can wash clothes in official powder, eat official fast food before opening my official chocolate bar or cereal bar, in my official energy supplier to the games heated house, send parcels, wash myself, etc etc It is so common place now that once again, the very honour it is meant to bestow is undermined. There are so many 'suppliers' 'supporters' 'sponsors' etc that i would now actively seek to use a company that has not wasted their money paying for the Olympics. I cannot be bothered to wade in on the security debacle - although that has helped me feel better. However bad my body aches and I want to sleep I keep thinking - at least I am not anyone senior at G4S. And finally on the subject, the bloody Olympic song that G and Bea sang in their end of year 'assemberlees' caused me to cry. I know! I hate showing emotion in public and crying is the very worst. I totally wasn't expecting it. I mean it is a song about the Olympics; but seeing G standing there with all his little friends singing his heart out about hope, hearing their voices, being the future, looking in their eyes etc etc I just couldn't help myself. Proper tears began to fall down my face. Noticeable ones. It must be the hormones. Then Bea sang it again today in her Leavers's assembly and I thought I was hardened against it, being prepared this time, but no, yet again I welled up. Nothing else got to me. How? How is it possible that a song about something that I find intensely irritating caused me to cry? Hormones are also on my list of annoyances. I shall be most pleased when they bugger off.

5. The recorder. Somebody somewhere, probably a recorder teacher with a vendetta against parents who failed to make their children practise, decided to adapt poor George Gerswhin's wonderful 'Summertime' for the recorder. The unimaginable pain of listening to an inexperienced recorder player playing a top E for what feels like years on end is a form of sophisticated torture. Added to that, due to her relative inexperience and our wrong assumption that she was going to play it in the end of year assembly, means that I have had to endure the sound since the 31st of March. It is hard for you to imagine if you have never encountered a top E played badly but it got to a point where I made her wait until I was upstairs and well away from the back of the kitchen where she practises, before I allowed her to Even begin playing it. I cannot describe the relief when she went for her final lesson and I managed to establish afterwards that no recorders were playing in the assembly, so that was that. No more summertime. Although miserably she now enjoys playing it as she is now note oerfect, so won't stop. I will be 'losing' both recorders very soon....at least until G's insistence to learn becomes unbearable and I cave in and let him. Until then, from September my school mornings will now only contain the bickering, whining and screaming sound of children and no fricking recorder. Bliss.

6. 'Hilarious' people asking me if i'm sure there is 'only one in there'. Yes, my stomach is large. No, I do not believe an entire extra person has somehow been 'missed' during my three scans. Anyone under the age of 60 saying this should be shot.

7. Clothing. Due to my stomach size and swollen feet I am now down to a maxi dress, one pair of leggings with a hole in, one pair of leggings without a hole, a pair of impossibly large maternity jeans, a few tent tops, a pair of flip flops and wellies. This means that if the sun shines I am in the maxi and flip flops and if it rains I am in jeans, tent top and Wellies. In the unpredictable Sprautumn weather I am not always able to get the combination correct and I wore flip flops on Saturday which caused me to skid rather embarrassingly in front of Sainsbury's and fall to my knees. Mercifully i had Bea with me to pull me up so i didnt have to embarrass myself further with offers of help from strangers. The jeans are large sized maternity and are full on 'over the bump' style which basically means thhere is the most amazing amount of denim you will have ever seen. Added to that I bought them 8 years ago, in a sale. They were hideous then and are even more so now. Big, boot cut, light blue denim hideousness with elasticised pockets and enough material to build a tent from. Oh and a round paint stain on the arse where I sat on a paint lid heavily pregnant with Bea. But, they fit and are comfortable and can be kept up by tying something through the belt loops, so I am wearing them. (belts are very out, they don't come in this size so I have resorted to keeping the jeans up with a bit of material that tied around an old M &S mac I actually returned, but clearly forgot about the belt part). As you can imagine I am looking HOT. So, if I had it my way I would spend the next week or so totally naked, either in bed or the bath where I find some comfort. I am very over clothing.

8. The cat. He has decided to abandon us for a house 6 doors down. They are 'animal' people. We are not. He has clearly worked this out. We have managed to persuade him back for a few minuts here or there with lots of food but essentially he has moved out. The very reason we have him is to keep the mice away. If he leaves, the mice come back and then I leave. Tres annoying.

That will do you for now. I have more annoyances but I don't want to over burden you. High blood pressure features quite highly - it sent me back to the bloody hospital on Friday evening and you KNOW how much I love it there. I spent 2.5 hours in a corridor being forgotten whilst counselling a poor woman who had been sent there from her GP after they failed to find a fetal heartbeat at 19weeks. Her mother and brother's girlfriend turned up to help me comfort her but the mother was quite drunk and not a massive help. She did say that she wished she could give her daughter a spliff to calm her down as she was quite sure every thing was ok - this was actually hilarious and did calm us both down. It turns out the mother was right and actually her drunk behaviour managed to distract her daughter enough to stop her crying for the nearly two hour wait she had to endure in order to find out that all was well. So, on the one hand I want to put the NHS on my list of annoyances, but on the other hand, on Saturday morning my NHS funded midwife popped round to take my blood pressure and check in on me so that I didn't have to return to hell and the emergency out of hours NHS GP let me diagnose G's ear infection over the phone and faxed through his prescription to Sainsbury's so we didn't have to spend hours waiting to be seen or find a convenient pharmacy. I just picked up his prescription whilst shopping. Genius. For those reasons King's Maternal Assessment Unit has escaped my vitriol for today.

So, in other news, the children break up from school tomorrow, the boys are being shipped off to my mum's at the weekend and I am going to spend the following week doing my very best to get this baby out to coincide with the opening ceremony of the Olympics so that I can direct my anger and screaming at the tv not K. I shall keep you posted.

I shall be in touch. Even if it is just to moan again. You lucky people.
Until then. Xxxxxxxxxxx

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