I’ve come up with a mutant of the Meme of Four idea. It occurred to me that whereas the questions were fun, they weren’t always the questions I wanted to answer. You know, difficult questions. With teeth.
Actually, I have this feeling very often when consulting FAQs on online help pages, which never seem to have quite the question I want to ask, so I end up having to tick ‘other’. Am I just a freakish curmudgeonly middle-aged oddball (answer – yes, and proud of it, so what’s your problem, punk?) or are online help pages simply hopeless?
So, here’s one I prepared earlier.
4 of your Pet Hates.
1. Umbrellas;
2. Pull-along suitcases;
3. People who groom themselves in public;
4. STOP.
Given that one is always encouraged to show one’s working, I shall elucidate.
Umbrellas
It’s always hard to walk in a straight line on a moving planet, and it is harder still on a crowded pavement on the way to work when the pavement is occupied with people going this way and that. How selfish it is, then, of some people, to occupy more of the pavement than they need by opening umbrellas. And given that I am six feet tall, the prongs of the average umbrella fall at precisely eye level, threatening, at the very least, to remove my glasses. And what’s the problem with rain, anyway? It’s not as if people will dissolve. The selfishness of umbrellistas is shown by the fact that they will engender an erection at even the slightest hint of atmospheric moisture, when the degree of rainfall will pose no harm whatsoever. After all, umbrellas are completely useless in the face of rainfall of any scale that would get one wet to any inconvenient degree. Umbrellas are fakes. They are phoneys. They are excuses. They have nothing to do with protection from the weather and everything to do with the carving out of exclusive territory. Ban them, I say! ban them now!
Pull-along suitcases
While I am preoccupied with trying to avoid my eyes being gouged out by the prongs of umbrellas, I am likely to trip up over suitcases dragged along at floor level. They are everywhere, these days, a plague of mobile obstacles thrown beneath one’s feet. And because the people who drag them hunt in packs, with a herd mentality, it doesn’t do to criticize them, in the way that some of the herd criticize me for toting my smaller and more energy-efficient rucksack. In any case, why do people feel the need for so much luggage that they require to schlep it behind them in such a smugly ostentatious fashion? More selfish than umbrellistas, suitcase-schleppers are embodiments of conspicuous consumption and the high-carbon economy. Naturally, when I rule the world, people with umbrellas and pull-along suitcases will be summarily shot.
People who groom themselves in public
Call me old-fashioned (go on, I dare you), but I’m of the opinion that grooming is one of those things that should only be practiced by mutual consent, and preferably behind closed doors – you know, things like swinging, cottaging and cell biology. So what is it that motivates the people who sit next to me on the train who whip out the slap, the lippy, the eyebrow tweezers, the powder and so on, without even asking me (or anyone else) if they’d mind? Total lack of consideration, that’s what. And, oh boy, the stink. There is nothing that turns the stomach more, especially on a very early train, than the cloying stench of powder, skin cream, cologne or after-shave. It gets into the hair. It steals into the nostrils. It clings to the tongue, it scorches the throat. It assaults the soul itself. Body odour is horrible, but at least it’s honest. It is no coincidence that umbrellistas who also drag their suitcases behind them are guilty of this crime to a disproportionate degree.
STOP
After many years of study I am convinced that there exits a secret organization whose purposes are shadowy, whose right name is unknown, but which for ease of identification I shall call STOP, the Society of Tiresome and Obstructive Pedestrians. People with umbrellas and roll-along suitcases may or may not be members of this organization, because membership is determined not so much by accoutrements as by attitude. I am fairly certain that there are secret training camps, perhaps in the remoter corners of Fenland Norfolk or Lincolnshire, in which teenagers are trained in the art of hanging around in shop doorways so that nobody on legitimate business can enter or leave (a technique borrowed from crowds of those so-called ‘foreign-language students’ which infest our university cities in the summer); and little old ladies are instructed in how to walk along an otherwise broad and deserted pavement, which would usually allow six grown men to walk abreast, in such a way that nobody can get past.
I live in North Norfolk, where many people go to retire. But if the senior department of STOP is in evidence in Cromer (where there lurks a ‘mobility shop’ boasting an ominous display of zimmer frames and mobility scooters, which look like the result of some eldritch miscegenation of skateboard and quad bike), it is rampant in nearby Sheringham, where the number of retirement homes is inversely proportional to the useable width of the pavement.
Age, too, is as much a matter of attitude as anno domini. Close to where I live is an edifice of smug and censorious flats which one can only buy if one is over 55. This causes me (aged 45) some amusement, especially when I walked past it with my pal Les (51) – fit, athletic heavy-rock bassist. “Only four more years to go, Les!” I taunted, wondering whether they’d let him in with a Marshall stack.
I’m with the Who, and hope I die before I get old. I have instructed my wife that if I am in such a state that I require a mobility scooter, she should strap me in, glue the pedal to the metal and point me towards the end of Cromer Pier.
I submit to you that the retribution meted out to pull-along suitcase users should be inversely proportional to the size of the bag. The inconvenience caused by a small pull-along suitcase is not really much greater than that caused by a large one – both are equally likely to leave behind a trail of wounded, irate pedestrians and the larger species are at least more conspicuous and easier to avoid.
As such, the punishment for people who drag along handbag-sized bags that could not conceivably weigh more than a small child should be proportionally more severe than people who are toting large, heavy pieces of luggage. The latter group would be given mere flesh wounds, while the former group would be beaten about the head and shoulders with their tiny pointless bags.
I also don’t understand umbrellas, and understand even less what the proper etiquette is regarding sharing one. An object not well designed to keep one person dry can be absolutely useless for both parties when shared (but perhaps the motivation is not always to keep dry…). And your comments about obstructive pedestrians are also good (though have to admit that I can occasionally be a bit day-dreamy on my walk home).
I don’t really mind people applying make-up in public. But what I absolutely hate is when I see a young lady doing something like: squeezing her boyfriend’s spots.
Absent from your list is the people that put their bags on the seat next to them when they board a train in rush-hour. One is then forced to ask if someone is sitting there (when you know that no-one is) or to offer to put their bag in the luggage rack. If not confronted they will sit like that the whole journey in full knowledge that there are people standing.
I never owned an umbrella. But I have borrowed one on occasion for romantic purposes when I was much, much younger…
And the “attitude” slow-poke pedestrians drive me crazy!
Did you know the umbrella was first popularised in the streets around Nature’s offices? Jonas Hanway, who is usually credited with introducing the device to the western world, lived in Red Lion Square in Bloomsbury. Fact.
Umbrellas have two uses. First is romance. Second is (when furled) as an weapon of strong defence against moronic commuters.
I wear a hat in the rain. Leaves my hands free for unarmed combat – I tell you, it’s a jungle in Sydney.
“pal Les (51) – fit, athletic heavy-rock bassist”
Naturally, in context, I briefly wondered whether ‘pal Les’ shouldn’t have been ” Les Paul ” .
In New York, we have the “up-lookers”. It’s been said that you can tell a tourist from a resident by the direction of their face—Tourists are forever gazing up at the wondrous skyscrapers, while residents are more concerned about stepping in dog droppings. I am now convinced that the up-lookers (prone to abrupt halts and slow meanderings) are members of STOP’s sister society: STOPPRs (Slow-moving Tourists Obstructing Passage of Permanent Residents).