The battle to survive irritating woes of life
We all have our small things in life that irritate us, and during one of our frosty mornings last week, I developed a sudden dislike for timber floors. Not being a creature that was ever accustomed to carpet slippers or wearing stockings in bed, the trek across timber floors on bare feet, after leaving the snugness of 'the leaba', just provided me with a little feeling of mild discomfort. I know all of the arguments in favour of timber floors - they're quite pleasant to look at; they're easy to maintain and keep clean; and apparently too, they're a lot healthier than carpets in terms of not absorbing and then releasing little dust mites that irritate our lungs. All very logical . . . but I still hate timber floors in wintertime and especially so during the frosty mornings and I'm also refusing to budge on the carpet slippers issue!
That's the first one off my chest but then there's the issue of blocked supermarket aisles whenever I'm called upon to do the weekly shopping. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a breed of shopper who quite deliberately leave their trolleys in the most awkward of places. There's a kind of diagonal or lateral parking strategy to all of this, which means that overtaking can't be completed on either side of the trolley. To make matters worse, the trolley drivers then leave the scene of the crime in search of a product in a far-off aisle. A bit like parking your car in the middle of two lanes on a dual carriageway.
Speaking of parking and traffic, the regular commutes to work provided a whole array of annoyances but surely there is none worse that the drivers who pull up within a couple of feet of your back bumper on the overtaking lane of the dual carriageway or motorway. Now before you point out that I shouldn't be staying on the outside lane, this only applies when the inside one has been stalled with slow-moving heavy goods vehicles, and the outside channel just fills up with cars that are driving along at speeds around the legal limit. At the risk of alienating myself from a certain cohort of drivers, a lot of the tailgaters seem to be behind the wheels of either Audis or Golfs - in mitigation, not all of them, I will add. So, that's annoyance number 3 out of the way.
Volume, background sounds, remote controls and hearing that's getting dodgier with each passing months also have to feature in 'top 10 of annoyances'. Is it my imagination or a bit off paranoia when the TV programme I'm watching switches to the ads and the volume levels seem to double. That normally activates a search for the remote control which can't be found having slipped into those secret chambers underneath the couch. Then, there's the guy or gal in the office who doesn't have headphones for their mobile, and wants to listen to something. The crackle of muffled speech or music just drifts into your ear space and it's time to take another of those deep breaths before picking up the courage to look over quite deliberately and coldly at the offending party. It usually works.
There are the personal things too, like having had to wear glasses all of my life, something which carries its own array of troubles. Glasses can get lost . . . they can be sat on . . . they can even be pulled off your face if an argument in the local gets too heated . . . and they seem to be forever need of cleaning. I've yet to figure out how the lenses smudge up so much over the course of an hour or two - maybe it's a rubbing of the eyes or could it be the 'God of Annoyances' just delivering another sucker punch to your comfort zone. Walk in off the street to a room full of people and there's the immediate fogging-up effect. And I won't dwell too much on the world of cataracts, other than to say that I was in the 5% category of people where the recovery time was closer to six months than the normal six days.
Technology then of course 'delivers in spades' as regard irritants. How many times have I been confronted with the real mind boggler of a question: "Please enter your password" and not having a clue of which of the 22 passwords that I might have possibly previously used, could apply to this particular question. And, how many times, have I gone to the mobile phone maybe to check up on a piece of news, a death notice or a missed call, only to get distracted by something I've spotted on screen, and then I can't remember what I wanted to check in the first place. More recently there have been incidences of computer screens shutting down every two minutes and wild kangaroos appearing as screen savers. Nothing personal against kangaroos, but it can be quite difficult to read an icon title lodged in the animal's ear.
Now for the ultimate contradiction in this column. It really is annoying to listen to people complaining all the time and who continue to paint pictures of gloom both locally and globally. Yes, of course, we're all doomed eventually, but do we need to be reminded of that fate every time we talk to someone or go for the temporary anaesthetic of a couple of pints of plain. We have no escape . . . and everything is far from perfect . . . but we don't need to get an earful of that, on each occasion that we talk to someone. And then there's the people who chew with their mouths open . . . the stocking from the day before that you find close to your knee on the inside of the jeans just before lunchtime . . . and the door left slightly ajar that rattles at night: Will I or won’t I get up to close it? I’m afraid things just aren't getting any simpler!