As my occasional reader knows, Backside is a stickler for good form. ‘Good’, meaning less irritating than people usually are. So when it comes to walking around public places, he’s lined up a few of his grumpiest gripes.
1. Have you noticed the door-stops? They stop to scratch themselves (or wha’evah) plumb in the entrance to a shop, an escalator or a bus, thus preventing all mobile users of the facility?
2. What about the broad-sides? They walk confidently along, happy with the delusion that they are not wider in girth than normal folk and can easily get through the available gap in the crowd.
3. And the ubiquitous pram brigade? They congregate in garrulous groups with the obvious objective of filling the pavement completely and endangering the lives the rest of us.
Don’t you just love people too? Do tell.
Boadicea's Chariot 
After last Wednesday I hate everybody!
Went to the Royal Welsh Show, unfortunately so did everyone else in Wales! 74,000 people and hot as hell.
Total mongers trolling along with all the above, totally bloody heaving, quite ridiculous they should limit the no attending.
Fortunately I had been lent ‘Founding Governors ‘ badges that got us into all sorts of tents and paddocks that were less crowded. Had lunch and came home early.
My pet hate are robotic mongers creeping about texting on mobile phones with no idea where they are.
Found one in Bellingham impeding my shopping in a supermarket just before I left. Tried to pass him several times, kept veering about. Finally lost patience, jabbed him in the arm, told him to get some manners, get a life and get out of my way in no uncertain terms. Gormless brat hardly seemed to understand human speech!
Roll on Darwinism!!!
Over a lifetime it has become noticeable to me the degradation of the general sharpness of the population.
So many stupid people out there it isn’t true.
I put it down to the modern interventionist medicine. Keeping alive children that would have died in previous ages. IVF breeding people that can’t and pretty obviously shouldn’t have!
Then the progeny are allowed to breed indiscriminately with the better ones causing a general degradation. You sure wouldn’t do it with cattle so why allow humans?
I have long thought the apotheosis of human development is in our past, the only other explanation is that we are dividing into two species.
Most of them fat with prams standing dead still in the way!!!
Talking about ‘door stops’ I’ve noticed over the recent years when I have worked in schools, that teachers and Teaching Assistants tend to have conversations right in the middle of corridors or right in front of doors causing bottle-necks in the traffic flow of teaching staff. Totally selfish, not bothered by others needs to move quickly, and clearly geographically diminished. Teachers? Don’t they see beyond the classroom walls?
PG, don’t get Backside going on teachers. 😉 And Christina, the hand-held gadget mongers are high on the list of irritants!
This piece appeared on the BBC website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23444086
Personally I don’t care whether people walk or stand on escalators, but I do object when their luggage stands beside them, rather than in front, thereby blocking progress.
Returning to our seats after a half time beer / loo break to be held up by people who forgot where they were sitting just 15 minutes ago!
They rummage through pockets / backpacks / handbags to find their ticket stubs,point as though they’ve just discovered Victoria Falls and slowly move on, idiots!
Sorry to be late, but I’m still catching up on the posts I missed in recent days. What used to grip my fur was the occasional flyer – the clown who would stand in the queue at check-in, get to the front and THEN start looking though his myriad suitcases and pockets for his passport and boarding pass. I would cheerfully have torn the throat out of each and every one of these throbbers.
A close second came the arrogant tosser who, on boarding the plane, would put his cabin baggage in the locker above 2K and then go to his seat in 46M pointedly to read some magazine or newspaper during the flight safety demo as if he had heard it all before. On landing, said tosser would march down the aisle oblivious to the entreaties of the cabin crew to remain in your seats until the captain turns off the seatbelt sign, barging aside the occupant of 2K who was trying to get back to 46m to retrieve his own carry-on.
They should never have made jet travel available to the great unwashed. Go ask Christina for a supportive sentiment.
OZ
Things that rile me…
1. Prius drivers. They drive out in front of me without warning forcing me to nearly come to a complete stop in a 60 MPH stretch area and then drive 40 MPH.
2. I drive a sensible car — a Subaru Impreza. Not overly small, but hardly large and it can drive well in all weather conditions. The only problem is that so many insufferable tossers drive cars far too large for them to handle and then park in such a was as to make it neigh on impossible for me to see anything when trying to drive away.
3. Prats with over-sized egos at passport control.
This is all very cathartic. 🙂
All the above, amen!