I try not to be negative on this blog, but sometimes you've just got to let it all out. Switching on one of the shopping channels by accident last night, I was driven to fury then to despair. Ingratiating salesgirls used every trick and lie and acting skill in the book as they tried to flog hideous £500 gemstone rings. And successfully too, by the look of it. I was suddenly overcome by all the things I find insufferable at the age of 60 (I turned 60 last month), and the list went on and on . . .
People knocking on your door or approaching you in the street with a false smile trying to sell you something, people having loud phone conversations in trains, people so busy with their smartphones they walk right into you, people fiddling with their smartphones when they're dining with you, people at nearby tables in restaurants not talking themselves but looking at you and listening to your own conversation (this only happens in England), people saying 'no worries', 'not a problem' and 'have a nice day' (sorry, this is an English, generational thing), people who expect you to pay for everything and don't offer their fair share, people who selfishly dominate conversations, people bragging about how much their house is worth, people boasting about how wonderful and perfect and successful their kids are, people who have beautiful, tooled-leather editions of Shakespeare and Dickens on their shelves but never read them, people who use dogs as fashion accessories, people wearing hardly any clothes in the middle of winter because they think they look good like that, people who have too many clothes and don't wear most of them, shopaholics, most restaurants, litter, the internal combustion engine, advertising, the commercialisation of Christmas, most pop music, 24-hour news, sport, soap operas, game shows, plum pudding, microwave meals, tea bags and instant coffee instead of the proper stuff, 95% of all supermarket bread, Twitter, the ubiquity of porn, most new movies, bargain airline travel, the Daily Mail, oven chips, fish and chips from 95% of fish and chip shops, sickly-sweet drinks, overpriced and undrinkable corner-shop wine, the excesses of capitalism, celebrity culture, a society which lets manipulators of the stock market and the exchange rate get away with dodgy if not illegal deals but puts a poverty-stricken young mother in jail for stealing, UKIP, blanket prejudice against minority groups in society, the insidious creep to the political right in England and parts of Europe, internet slander, gossip and rumour without proof or foundation . . .
Could I be turning into an unbearable 'grumpy old man'?
Though, to end on a positive note, my list of likes and loves could stretch much further — real ale, French food, country churches, a full moon on a crisp winter night, a beechwood in autumn, reading in bed, a long walk, living as well and as economically as I can, roast chestnuts, Marmite, Mozart, Nastassja Kinski, romantic love etc. etc.
Though, to end on a positive note, my list of likes and loves could stretch much further — real ale, French food, country churches, a full moon on a crisp winter night, a beechwood in autumn, reading in bed, a long walk, living as well and as economically as I can, roast chestnuts, Marmite, Mozart, Nastassja Kinski, romantic love etc. etc.
