Author, journalist and professor of Modern English Literature, John Sutherland, gives us a comprehensive list of the things that really get his goat - from 5p coins to Canadian pharmacists (yes, really). What makes you see red?
John Sutherland
15 things to be grumpy about
Posted on: Thu 08-Jan-15 17:21:00
(64 comments )
You should, Dylan Thomas told his dying father, 'rage' against the end. Time enough for resting in peace when you're resting in peace. The Welsh bard, alas, never made it to 40 (raging all the way, like a bull confronted with the gelding shears). No going gentle for young Dylan.
Below are fifteen things that enrage (b. 1938) me.
1. The Oldie. For some reason they send me two unsolicited copies monthly. I toss both without taking them out of their plastic sheaths. I don't need a pneumatic bath pillow, a stair lift, or - least of all - a bloody Barbour jacket.
2. Politicians like Nick Clegg who blandly inform me that I'm a millionaire, apparently, and shouldn't have a 'freedom pass'. I often complain about it to Alan Sugar, who rides the same 27 bus with me. I don't think. Beware the grey vote, Nick. It's coming for you.
3. People who bump into me on the pavement and look at me as if they're surprised I'm (still) there. I know why, of course. The young ladies don't see me as a prospect, the young men don't see me as a threat and the middle aged many are in work (or looking for it) and must bustle. Sharp elbows, as Thomas Carlyle said. I'm invisible.
4. Actors on TV who mumble. Newscasters I applaud for their clear diction. At parties I think all guests should either have subtitles or volume knobs.
People who bump into me on the pavement and look at me as if they're surprised I'm (still) there.
5. Every young stripe (with the exception of young Scandinavians, oddly) who won't surrender their 'elderly' privilege seat on the London tube.
6. The Canadian pharmacists who send me emails boasting of how cheap their Viagra/Cialis tablets are.
7. Bus drivers who, as soon as I get on, start lurching their bus around like cops on a high speed chase.
8. Tamara Ecclestone (viz)
9. Cardboard milk, fruit juice and soup cartons that need nimbler thumbs than mine (at any period of my life) to open. And those unopenable plastic bags in supermarkets.
10. The London A-Z which has, mysteriously, shrunk its print to a point-size that only nano-technology could handle, although, I confess, it could be something to do with my eyes.
11. The prostate gland.
12. The gremlin in my house (I recognised him in Paranormal Activity) who thinks it’s funny to hide my glasses and the TV remote control. Mr G. sometimes lurks in the washing machine and eats one (just one) of my socks.
13. 5p coins. I'm constantly having to bend down and pick the little sods up. Oddly enough, I used to love tanners - remembering, of course, long ago pocket money ("I've got sixpence, jolly little sixpence….").
14. Whoever it was who decided to decimalise our beautiful English coinage.
15. Anyone who thinks 'silver surfer' is a smart thing to say.
I could go on, and I hope I do for another twenty years at least. But, the fact is, I've had a hugely lucky life - living, so far, longer than my parents and grandparents in conditions that they, poor working class folk, would have regarded as unimaginable luxury and privilege. The greatest privilege of all, of course, the education they (quite as clever, or cleverer, than me) were denied and which their sacrifices (especially those of my mother) gave me. In memoriam matris, un-ragefully.
John's book, Last Drink to LA: Confessions of an AA Survivor is published by Short Books and is available from Amazon.
it must be the weather!