21 Things I Irrationally Hate are:
1. Clicking jaw during mastication
2. Blue bottles hammering their heads against a window pane and threatening to fly into my forehead while hurling around the room at speed in a misjudged figure of eight
3. Uncontrolled screaming, shouting, running, hitting, breaking, pigeon-chasing wayward children en masse in cafes, parks, museums, aquariums, where, by the way, you will inevitably find a deranged five year old boy hammering on the glass shouting ‘Nemo!’ while the parents stand idly by enjoying their momentary respite at the expense of the longevity of an institutionalised Clown Fish, and other places of interest…keep them on reins until they are at least thirteen or take the little blighters to an open field where you can unleash them, for the love of Mike!
4. Squeaking sound of cotton wool and the repulsive feel of it in my fingers as it catches on my nails and causes skin tingling shivers
5. One wintry, dark and drizzly evening, I was waiting in traffic at a roundabout and noticed a small boy, perhaps eight years old, in a burgundy school blazer, trying to cross the road. He kept stepping into the street one foot and then back on the curb and he just could not get across because the cars were coming thick and fast from all directions. It was my turn to go and I stopped my car on the roundabout so that he could make it. A couple of people gave those long, angry hoots on their horns that sound like shouting because I blocked them from rushing to wherever they were going but I didn’t care. I just hated that no one let that boy cross the road. I hated the humans we can be when we’re consumed with our own squinty-eyed, selfish, single-mindedness. I hated the city. I hated the rushing. I hated it so much I cried when I got home because no one let the boy cross the road.
6. A gang of wasps trying to share my lunch
7. Nine inch heeled torturous, posture damaging, toe squishing, foot crippling death trap shoes…I watched a girl on a night out with her date teetering around on stiletto heels before flapping her arms like a demented seagull and taking a mean tumble down long escalators in Euston underground. I hate that we women feel like we have to be taller and our legs have to be longer to be attractive. I have been there and now I truly hate those killer heels. There are better ways to feel taller…try a penny-farthing or stilts if you need a rush.
8. Canine faecal matter on the pavement down the hill on the way to the train station
9. 4am rumblings of a Boeing 747 over the roof of our home that is just the beginning of the relentless air traffic that congests the skies 9 km above our fitfully, slumbering heads
10. Man-made fibres drive me potty. If I wear viscose then I am so wired, so electrically charged and I can get a shock from anything…even the ruddy cat and neither of us are happy about that.
11. Someone’s tendency to place his dinner plate at the very edge of the table so that the plate’s rim overhangs the floor and is far easier to knock off in spectacular fashion when there is an entire empty welcoming middle to the table. No need to exist on the borders I say. I hate unnecessary risk-taking with a perfectly good piece of crockery and a nice meal.
12. That single, wiry black hair, that before forty had never shown itself and now sneaks up on me under my jaw and that other one that grows out of my moustache, it’s darker than the rest and does not respond so easily to my friend Jolen. What do you want? Why are you here? Is it because I, having been the maiden and the harlot, must now become the hag? I hate it but then again perhaps I could nurture it and come Halloween it will be a new accoutrement to my witch’s costume. ‘Are you a real witch?’ children will say and I’ll show them that loathsome chin hair as proof of my new found identity as the neighbourhood Crone!
13. Seams in the toes of socks are an abomination. Why do sock designers ensure that your little toes will be rubbed raw to blistering by poorly placed seams? Perhaps, they assume that women won’t have little toes anymore after all those years of wearing pointy toed foot breakers which in fairness, in my case, is almost true but I still have enough toe to rub.
14. Bad queuers
15. Mean bus drivers who accelerate really fast, take corners at 100mph and slam on the brakes throwing old ladies and their shopping bags down the centre of the aisle till they fall on top of a poor Mum who’s trying to remain upright while holding onto baby in buggy. Mean, mean, mean bus driver. Not all of them, just too many is all.
16. People looking
17. Sitting next to fidgety, twitchy legged people on flights, train journeys, buses.
18. Nose pickers in traffic jams…I can see you!
19. The low, top shelf in the newsagents. Even a child could see 21 year old Kent-born, Denise’s mammary glands galumphing out from the cover of a lads’ mag. Really, I don’t know who should be more insulted; perhaps the men who these over-paid media twits have reduced to fodder chewing, video game-playing brainless idiots that only pause from Streetrace 5 to have a mid-afternoon w***.
20. Pouting
21. Dust
A very funny and brilliant blogger posted her list of irritations here: http://rarasaur.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/21-things-i-irrationally-hate/ She invited people to do the same. And so I have, thanks to positively radiating Rara!! Reading hers and writing my own provided some well-needed amusement for which I am very grateful. :>)
Image: The Angry One by Francis Hodler 1881, Source: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/ferdinand-hodler/the-angry-one
Yasmin Ward 