APPARENTLY, during the first couple of weeks back at work after the festive break, little niggles that might otherwise pass you by become all-out, breaking-point, right-that's-it-I'm-off-to-B&Q-to-buy-a-chainsaw issues of principle. So while that perpetual sniffer across the desk from you or the girl on the bus with the annoying ringtone wouldn't ordinarily get to you, this month you might just find yourself in one of the city's seedier bars enquiring as to how one might hire a c
A white van has been parked outside my front gate since October. It is parked legally and taxed until June, which means the police can't budge it until then. I know. I've called them twice about it. I even suggested there might be a dead body in the
back but they just laughed. Can you imagine?
So there it sits, day after day, never moving, taking up the spot that by rights should be mine and blocking the view from my kitchen window with its ugly, grubby white van-ness. Thus far, it has acquired two flat tyres and if I was a less law-abiding citizen with, say, a tendency to mindless acts of vandalism, the windscreen might have had a brick through it, while the message on the side might be more offensive than the current 'wash me' etched in the inch-thick grime. And more permanent.
And while I'm having a moan, has anyone else noticed a dramatic increase in the volume of dog excrement on our pavements? Who are these people who like the idea of having a dog yet are too lazy or squeamish to clean up after them? Scum, that's what. Don't get me wrong, I quite like dogs; it's the owners I can't stand – the irresponsible ones who think nothing of letting their pooch dump a steaming pile of disease-ridden poop on the pavement then walking off, leaving the offending article to be indelibly trodden into the grooves of trainers and the tread of pram tyres.
Apparently, allowing your dog to foul the pavement can incur a fine, but I have a better idea. Reintroduce the stocks for these filthy pieces of humanity and see how they like getting grime smeared on their feet and up their trouser legs.
You think that's extreme? I'm just getting warmed up. My Christmas tree is still lying abandoned in my driveway awaiting council pick-up. It seems they won't collect it these days unless it is cut into convenient, foot-high stumps (so it's just as well I invested in that chainsaw after all). And I'm still waiting for my nephew's Christmas present to be delivered. I ordered it the week before Christmas, it arrived when I was away at New Year and now they're demanding I schlep out to Livingston to pick it up. Funny, but I thought online shopping was supposed to be convenient.
And don't get me started on call centres (is it too much to ask to speak to a human being?), broadband providers (part two), supermarket deliveries (yes, that's a great idea, send all the bruised bananas and on-the-cusp-of-the-sell-by-date rubbish to the poor, hard-pressed worker who doesn't have time to shop for herself). Then there's that advert for vans featuring Duncan Bannatyne in which he seems unable to enunciate a single word properly. I could go on but it wouldn't be pretty. I'm off to lie in a dark room. Someone wake me up in June. Around the time the police are towing that wretched van away would be good.
