I DO try really hard not to moan, I really do, but sometimes, well, a girl just has to get things off her chest, in a manner of speaking.
Maybe it’s just been an unfortunate few days, but this week I seem to have encountered one too many annoying things and I feel the need to offload them. I apologise if you have to bear the brunt, but I confidently expect to feel much better and more at peace with the world once I’m done.
Gripe No. 1. A health food shop that preaches about all things pure and natural should not, in my view, employ counter staff who reek so strongly of cigarette smoke that I feel physically repulsed. Nor should they so readily put the tiniest of purchases into large, brand new, plastic carrier bags. Why doesn’t the shop show some initiative and offer recycled bags?
Gripe No. 2. I know this is territory I have covered here before – much to the delight of a number of correspondents who wrote to me in enthusiastic agreement – but I am so heartily fed up with other people’s dogs that I feel the need to say it again. Over-excited, dribbling puppies are one thing (as I recently learnt to my cost), but grown-up dogs really shouldn’t be allowed to slobber over visitors, as one did to me at the weekend. The slobbering was followed by enthusiastic leaping, with heavy paws thudding into my stomach and down my legs. ‘Don’t mind him,’ I was told, ‘he’ll settle down soon.’ Grrr. When I was finally given the chance to settle down myself, I was offered a chair covered in dog hairs. Who’s in charge in this house, I wondered, animals or humans? I think we know, and I think we know that it is the case in many, many households.
Gripe No. 3. This is another oldie but it still makes me angry. Queuing in the chemists to pay for various products intended to enhance mind and body, I was sickened to see on the counter a large box with a tempting display of Cadbury Creme Eggs. Whatever place does that sort of junk have in a chemists shop? A sweetshop, yes, but a chemists? And do you know, these eggs cost 36p each? That’s more than seven shillings! They weren’t even affordable when they cost sixpence.
Gripe No. 4. They’re messing about with our dentists again. Some fancy-pants scheme being brought in on April 1st seems designed to ensure there will soon be about four NHS dentists left in the country, in little pockets of resistance recognisable by the 48-mile-long queues of hopeful patients. This new regime is presumably intended to make us pay for private dentistry or to hope all our teeth will fall out quickly and painlessly so we don’t have to worry any more about organising a mortgage each time we need a filling.
Gripe No. 5. I believe I may also have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: which rotten scheming bloke arranged for Mothering Sunday to fall on the same day as the clocks go forward, thus depriving us of an hour of our longed-for lie-in? And even when we’re up we can’t relax, as the first half of the day must be spent setting clocks and watches to the new time so that we don’t get left behind. It’s not easy, life.
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