… or, as some might say, my top three pet peeves.

As I get older, more short-tempered and grumpy, there are a plethora of things in modern-day life that I’ve become increasingly less tolerant with. The following three instances may appear insignificant to the casual observer, but believe me, they cause me to lie awake at night and wonder just what this sad old world has come to.

Unsolicited, cold telephone calls: if I’ve had one call saying the cause of my only insurance claim in over forty years of driving wasn’t my fault, I’ve had a hundred. Perhaps two hundred. For goodness sake! I reversed my van into the overhang / angled part of a two-tonne builder’s skip.

Maybe I’m being too hard on myself?

And now that I seem to have blocked all the possible instigators of these ‘blameless road traffic accident’ calls, I’m now being told I’m on a list of people who have been blameless in an accident involving industrial equipment.

Give me strength! I’m a chuffin’ dog walker – the most technically advanced piece of industrial equipment I use is a poop-scoop.

Actually – come to think of it, there was that time when … ok, no. Let’s not get into that right now.

Call Centres making unsolicited, cold telephone calls …. STOP IT! NOW!

Parliamo football. (Football player speak): it seems even the brightest and best educated of UK’s football stars cannot grasp the concept of percentages.
TV / Radio interviewer: “That was some goal you scored this afternoon. You must be pleased with your overall performance though?”
Player: “110%“

Know what else really grinds my gears with these football stars -starting a reply to a question with either “Obviously” or “Like I said …”

“Obviously, the manager told me to just go out and play my natural game …”

No. It’s NOT obvious. He may have told you to go out and build sandcastles in the goalmouth for all we know – we weren’t privy to the conversation.

TV / Radio interviewer: “What do you put your recent goal-scoring streak down to?”
Player: “Like I said … the boss has given me more freedom to express myself and the players around me are class.”

No. You didn’t say. The question was only just asked, you pillock!

And commentators are now starting to wind me up too. It seems to be en vogue to say, after a player has made a horrendous cock-up but the opposition failed to capitalize for whatever reason:
“He just about got away with that …”

Well? Did he? Either he did, or he didn’t. Simples.

Football players and commentators talking b******s … STOP IT! NOW!

‘Coming up in tonight’s show …’: what is it with the present day trend of showing several minutes of an imminent television show’s highlights before running the opening sequence?

I want to see the programme unfold as it happens. I don’t want see, before Bake-Off starts, an array of brightly coloured, delightfully decorated chocolate cakes and a perfect tarte au citron; neither do I want to know that some contestant has dropped their tray of iced fingers all over the floor, or that somebody’s bread didn’t rise to the occasion.

I don’t want to know before the show starts, that some competitor on SAS (Who Dares Wins) or I’m A Celebrity (Get Me Out Of Here!) has had a meltdown or is missing their children.

TV planners / programmers or whoever you are … STOP IT! NOW!


I know I should perhaps be directing my ire to the more pressing and critical issues of the world. But I was taught that ‘you get slack by degrees.’

Once we accept a drop in expectations and standards like those above, we are on a slippery slope. If we can’t get these things right, where’s the hope for reversing climate change and saving the black-footed ferret?

Just sayin’.

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