Petty Annoyances

I know you’ve been missing it, so I thought some more ranting on stuff which riles me might be gently entertaining this week.

For instance, how annoying is the word “sic”? This is a short version of “I know! Imagine spelling / grammar / punctuation this bad. But luckily I noticed, so I’m smugly going to draw your attention to it, knowing full well that if I hadn’t, you almost certainly wouldn’t have noticed it, thus neatly making you feel like a plank of wood..”  And it's a written version of thumbing your nose whilst blowing a raspberry.  I realise of course that this is dangerous ground for me, having ranted long and tedious over bad grammar once upon a time. This means that if I ever in fact did use the word “sic” (in other words if its smugness didn’t irritate me quite so comprehensively and overwhelmingly, for me it would be the equivalent of “Aaarghh!! This person’s grammar / punctuation is horrible!!”) I am confident that my readers would immediately bring it to my attention in a most forthright manner. But I don’t use it. Because it’s annoying. And self-congratulatory. And deeply offensive. And Latin, for heaven’s sake.

People who do not write to say thank you - except new parents who should have some sort of letter-writing amnesty until they have attained at least 4 hours’ uninterrupted sleep in one stretch. If my beautiful 11 year old god-daughter can write me a card from America to thank me for her Christmas present, and my other beautiful god-daughter, aged 14 and having way too much fun at boarding school, and connected to me by all the normal methods of electronic communication, can find a few minutes to write me an actual thank you letter with a real pen on a physical piece of paper, I say anyone can manage it…

Bullies. School playground bullies are bad enough. And since most of us at one time or another in our lives have borne the hideous brunt of some form of bullying, I cannot imagine how people grow up purportedly to adulthood and yet still find it necessary to be a bully. Don’t these people ever grow out of being vile and obnoxious to others?  I will never get it.

People who are of the opinion that only their opinion counts. This is particularly offensive in the world of new parenthood, because it is difficult enough being suddenly responsible for a fragile little life without an instruction manual of any sort, but to have other people question your parenting decisions when you are at your most vulnerable and short of confidence, and just because those decisions don’t match their parenting choices, is downright mean. The world is rife with this sort of behaviour though, it’s not just parenting. Different (or in my case complete lack of) sartorial flair is wrong. Different financial choices are wrong. This latter rankles particularly sorely. It’s our money, we earn every single last penny, so the decision about how to spend that money is ours, and ours alone. Thus it cannot be wrong just because it is different from how others would spend that money. Engineer and I choose to spend our disposable income on our home, our children and shared experiences. Others choose to spend theirs on long haul holidays and designer clothes. Neither choice is wrong, both are equally valid.

Show biz types. I watched the Brit Awards a few weeks ago. Aside from the fact that I recognised virtually none of the nominated acts, which may explain some of my rancour in this regard since clearly that makes me feel ancient and past it, I thought that they all behaved arrogantly and appallingly (with some notable exceptions, for instance Adele, who professed to Kylie that she felt like a “drag queen” beside her – now there’s a singer with talent, humility and normal body weight, so thus we know it is possible to have all three…) In consultation with my friend Glamour Geek, I have established with some relief that I am not alone in holding this opinion. What on earth makes these people think that just because they can sing a bit they are somehow better than everyone else on the planet? What about heart surgeons? Charity workers? Paramedics? Teachers? Explorers? Scientists? Shouldn’t we have a Brit Award for normal people who make a real difference and probably don’t realise it?

And…breathe.

Words which are only words in our family

This week I want to elaborate a little bit on the theme of my crazy family. Amongst all of our foibles and strange ways, there is a full vocabulary of words which have very clear meanings to us but which, when utilised in the wrong company, tend to be met with at best a blank look and at worst a rapid and very jittery reversed exit from the room.

Tiddly Push: a Morris Traveller. Little Vulture and I were despatched to boarding school still under the mistaken impression that everyone knew this. It was a puzzle to us that the words “Tiddly Push” did not appear on the back of our Morris Traveller, but we had concluded that it must have fallen off, much like the events which overtook my parents’ Ford Zephyr which returned from the accident repair workshop in Singapore as a Ford Zerhyp.  Other street cred inhibiting rude awakenings which we received at boarding school include, but are not limited to, the discovery that the words malevolent and benevolent are not pronounced “male-volent” and “been-volent”; the non-existence of Santa Claus; the fact that pigs do not slit their throats when they swim (in fact it transpires that they are very good swimmers, as it happens); and the stark realisation that Granny’s ancient Triumph Herald was seriously uncool, and not a beautiful car as we had previously thought.

The Thing: this is the item of furniture which contained all our stuff when we had a cottage in the Cairngorms. It was discovered in the garage of one of our army houses, unused, having been removed from the kitchen of the same house. It was a strangely-shaped ex-kitchen cabinet, a piece from a fitted kitchen which had been unfitted and had survived. It contained glasses, alcohol, napkins, board games, sellotape, string, ash trays, puzzle books, art material, playing cards, table mats, maps, compasses, scissors, nails, light bulbs, measuring tapes, and an AK47 Russian hunting rifle. Actually, scrap the rifle, it didn’t have one of those. So we called it The Thing. Well, what would you have called it?

La-Di-Da: a game to be played at the dinner table. When people say an occasion was a bit “La-di-da”, Little Vulture and I immediately have visions of frightfully drunk people wearing inappropriate hats and passing a variety of objects, or indeed the hats themselves, around the table to the rhythm of the words “La-di-da! La-di-da! La-di-diddly-da-di-DAH!” and we think it sounds rather fun. Turns out most people have a much more negative view of a la-di-da occasion - who knew? The word la-di-da spawns the noun “da”, meaning the object which you intend to start the game holding (everyone must have a da to pass to their left), and also generates lively discussion regarding the fact that you must not let go of your da during the diddlies. A word to the wise – never play this game with someone who has had a stroke. They were probably rubbish at it before. But they will now blame their stroke on the fact that they are still rubbish at it.

A Grampa Egg: an omelette. Obviously. Well, which other eggs can Grampas cook?

Cherubali: Boxer’s pet name, made up by her big brother. I have no idea where he got it from. She is also variously known as The Baby Cheese and Stinky Malinki. No of course we don’t call her by her actual name, that would be boring.

Bonkers Bankers

So this week we are full of self-righteous (and envious, let’s not deny it) rage about Mr Stephen Hester who was to be awarded 20 years’ salary for a normal person as a wee extra for being a jolly good chap. That is on top of his 20 years’ salary for a normal person that he receives in one year. We are doubly annoyed about this because, as we keep being reminded, we tax payers own his employing bank, so should we not have a say in how our bank’s dwindling resources are deployed?

However, I don’t wish to be drawn into an argument about whether or not Mr Hester deserves his bonus because I know precisely squat about running a bank, and presumably he knows quite a bit about it, so this makes me completely unqualified to offer an opinion one way or the other. For me, this is more about endeavouring to imagine what on earth one could possibly do with all that money. And more than that, who on earth actually needs that kind of money. There are people living in the rich countries of the western world who cannot afford to put food on the table, and then there’s this guy, who could live very comfortably on a tenth of his salary, never mind his bonus.

This is where I get worried. Our politicians are mostly millionaires, born and raised in wealthy families, the original silver spoon brigade. I don’t begrudge them that at all. I was raised in a normal family where the overdraft was well-used, but I wouldn’t have traded my childhood for a silver spoon version because I have witnessed many times the fact that money does not buy happiness. However, it concerns me that our politicians cannot possibly empathise with the very people they have been voted in to government to look out for. They have no idea what it is like to have to make a choice between putting food on the table or money in the electricity meter. Heck, I can’t really imagine what that’s like, so how could they?

I wonder if Messieurs Cameron, Clegg and Osborne sip Darjeeling together in the withdrawing room at 10 Downing Street and wonder what all the fuss is about.

“I mean, it’s under a million pounds! What on earth is wrong with everyone? It’s not as if we’re paying him £100 million! That really would be too much.”

“I know. I mean, the poor man has to have some capital to service his yacht, and that Lear jet can’t be cheap to run, but how else is he to meet all his commitments? We can’t have him using Easyjet like the Great Unwashed.”

These are the same people who are withdrawing / reducing / scrapping benefits for low income families, voluntary sector organisations and public services. This is where the money is really needed. This is where that million pounds could make a real difference to peoples’ lives. That’s why people are so annoyed about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I recognise that we live in a capitalist world and I am perfectly ok with that. I realise that to redistribute wealth forcibly is to suppress ambition and potentially to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator, which wouldn’t be good for anyone. We have to be allowed to make choices. But trying to squeeze money out of people who don’t have any (people on benefits getting less benefits, people on low and middle incomes paying more tax, etc) is no way to address the situation we find ourselves in. People who take a job which involves a bonus are perfectly entitled to take that bonus, of course they are. It’s not about entitlement. It’s about doing what’s right for society. Most people have to budget because that’s the only way to make their disposable income stretch to cover everything it needs to cover. Why shouldn’t everyone have to budget?