Thursday 3 September 2009

Tablets, smut, molluscs and moles.

It's been a while. I need to vent some spleen.
It's not the big things that will do for me - I've coped quite well with all the usual crises that we are told are dangerous for your stress levels: births, deaths, house moves, job changes, relationship breakups, car crashes, redundancy and the like - but the little things, the low-level daily unpleasantness and irritations, they are the events that are going to tip me over the edge. Instead of dealing with them calmly and rationally, I do nothing, and allow a corrosive bitterness to well up inside me, that finally vents in a moment of pure, blind rage over something innocuous. Be warned.
Recently, events that have contributed to my inner well of bile are:

The incorrect selling of hayfever tablets: In the UK, there is a limit on the amount of medicine you can buy at once, in an attempt to prevent people from killing themselves with fistfuls of pills. This is one of those well-meaning laws that are steeped in good intentions but in fact just cause irritation - as the legal limit only applies on a 'per transaction' basis, it essentially serves no practical purpose: would-be suicides can easily get all the paracetamol they need by simply queueing up again (which is a depressing enough process to have to do once, so I can't imagine that being forced to do it multiple times does anything other than underline their decision).
However, rules are rules, and I understand that. I also understand that, should I inadvertently have more then the legal limit of hayfever tablets in my shopping basket (let's say, ooh, three packets, instead of two) then the store is quite right to remind me of the law in this matter and refuse to sell me the extra packet. Perfectly reasonable. I can perhaps do without the patronising little lecture at the checkout, but OK.
However, if that same store is actually deliberately selling hayfever tablets on a 'three for the price of two' deal , thus encouraging members of the public to put three packets of tablets in their basket in the first place, that is not reasonable. That is both stupid and annoying, as I explained at some volume at the time. I am not suicidal, I am thrifty - and it's not my mental faculties you should be worrying about, you shambling pack of halfwits.
What annoys me most is the fact that I clearly let myself down a bit in the end. If I am honest, telling some poor misbegotten checkout girl on minimum wage that she should "fire your entire marketing department" is highly unlikely to affect any kind of change, and just makes me look like a pillock.

Discarded smut: I got a new car recently - yes, we are now a two-car family for the first time ever, allowing my wife some respite from spending up to 4 hours a day walking our children to the places they need to go, but also enabling us to destroy the environment more thoroughly and at twice the rate and efficiency. My new car is very nice, and as the girls never get to ride in it remains fairly clean - it is lovely to be driving around in a vehicle that doesn't have a thick mulch of hairclips, tissues and discarded raisins across the back seat - but it does sometimes confuse me in that the control stalks around the steering wheel are all in the opposite place than they are on the Focus.
This was brought home to me on my first trip to work. As I got out of the car it beeped at me, telling me the lights were on. I reached back in and flipped what I thought was the correct stalk to switch them off, and then slammed the door, 'blipped' the car locked and went on my way, whistling - unaware that what I had actually done was not turn off the lights, but switch on the rear windscreen wiper. When I returned to the car some eight hours later the battery was completely flat. I didn't have any jump leads, nobody would stop and help me, and in the end I had to call the RAC.
The breakdown van arrived very quickly. The car battery also charged very quickly. The bloke driving the van was very nice, we had a good chat about the reliability of my new car and the faults I should look out for with it. All was, in fact, going swimmingly, until he suggested I reverse out of the parking bay and just drive around the car park for a lap to see if all was well. As I backed slowly out, I became aware that he was staring down at the ground in front of my car quite intently. I poked my head out the window to see what was fascinating him, and there, just where my front wheel arch had been a second before (and looking for all the world like I had been reading it and had quickly discarded it when he arrived) was a porno mag. And not just any porno mag - no, this appeared to be a specialist porno mag, dedicated to the interests of the kind of gentleman who likes the (much, much) older and rounder woman.
He looked down at the mag. I looked down at the mag. We looked at each other.
"You've dropped your magazine" he said.
"That's not my magazine," I protested, but far too quickly. It sounded suspicious even to me.
There was an awkward pause. So awkward, in fact, that I felt myself blushing out of sheer embarrassment, which did little to reinforce my innocence.
"OK" he said, clearly not believing me. He picked it up and walked it slowly to the nearest bin, leaving me to cringe while I imagined him calling back to the control centre and asking them to redflag my membership and add a note to my account that I was pervert.
My anger here is towards the person who discarded the magazine in the first place, of course. Who leaves porno mags lying around in public? I can only assume you have so much porn that you don't notice when some goes missing, which frankly isn't a good sign - for God's sake, get another interest: do us all a favour and take up a sport or hobby, will you?

Slugs: Vile things. Little animated pockets of snot. Never liked them. But I like them even less now, since they starting hiding under the handle of the green recycle box, ensuring that they burst all over my fingers when I try and lift the box up.
Have you ever had burst slug under your fingernails? It is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds. I am actually dry-heaving a bit just typing this.

Children who throw dead animals at you: Picture the scene: I am on the beach in North Wales, leaning against the sea wall, and chatting amiably with an old friend and his girlfriend. We are discussing weighty, serious matters as befits people of our age and status: the economy, politics, long lists of all of our friend's character flaws, why Big Brother is shit - that kind of thing. The beach is warm and sandy, the waves are supplying a soothing background hiss, and the sea is as sparkling as our oh-so-witty conversation. It is a perfect holiday moment. What could possibly ruin it?
As it turns out: some children throwing a dead animal at us.
There is a rustling from the woods behind us, and a giggle, and then out of the sky drops an uninvited guest. It is a dead mole, it's eyes glazed, it's mouth firmly shut in a grim little rictus. It doesn't look any happier about it's sudden arrival on the picnic blanket than we are.
I stand up and look into the woods. A small band of children are melting back into the treeline, hooting with laughter. One of them - presumably the molehurler himself, a boy of no more than eleven - stops and calls over to me:
"Sorry about the rodent, mate"
Now, I know what you're thinking: What a schoolboy error. That's a common misconception, moles are actually of the Talpinae family and not rodents. And you are quite correct, though it's worth remembering that (a) he was a schoolboy and (b) if you are the kind of child who flings animal carcasses at tourists, then I suspect scientific classification is not high on your agenda: they are all just members of the 'ammo' family to you...
He smirks. I tell him, in short angry words, what he can do with his dead mole. He disappears, laughing, and leaving me to kick a small furry grey corpse further along the beach, so that my children won't find it and be tempted to poke it with sticks when they return with their ice creams.

There. I feel much better now.
Thanks for listening, I'm sure something will come along soon that winds me up all over again...

5 comments:

Misterimpatient said...

You told me your subscription expired last month? What? Do you save these things? Ick!

Carol said...

Yep, it is definitely the little things that get you in the end!!

Putting the empty milk bottle back in the fridge, leaving one sheet of paper on the toilet roll, people who stop dead in front of you when your walking along the street and last but not least people who cut you up when your driving!!! Grrrrrr

C x

Ps. I'm sorry....I did laugh about the slugs....not very supportive I know...but I just couldn't help it!!

Kate said...

I have had burst slug under my fingernails so I totally sympathise.

Keith Wilcox said...

Dead tossed moles? Popped slugs? Hayfever tablets? What I find fascinating is that you manage to keep your sense of humor through the whole thing :-) I've gotta admit, if someone threw a dead mole at me, I'd have run after them and made them eat it. But, that's just me HA. Anyway, here's to hoping the rainbow comes out!

Anonymous said...

Paul,

I used to do things with dead moles when I was younger. It did me no harm whatsoever

your friend Gavin