For some reason, I am often accused of being miserable.

Quite why is something of a mystery to me as in spite of the fact that life continually builds brick walls in my path, I consider myself to be generally speaking, a cheerful and optimistic soul.

I suspect this misconception has much to do with the fact that I have a face which was specially constructed to look grumpy. I’ve certainly never gone for all this ‘you use more muscles to scowl than smile’ rubbish as my scowl has always come perfectly naturally and without any effort whatsoever!

That said, there are numerous things which irritate me on an almost daily basis and whilst I generally try to let them wash over me, they do occasionally drive me to distraction. Therefore, it strikes me that now that this blog is up, running and increasingly popular apparently, it might provide a useful vehicle for me to let off steam with a selection of rants. A kind of online counselling if you will.

The hard bit is deciding what to rant about. For the more I have pondered today, the more I’ve realised how irritating life can be. Well, I say life but what I actually mean is people.

Of course, it surely goes without saying that if everyone were like me, life would be a lot easier but they’re not. Instead, generally speaking, they are a pain in the arse. Primarily because of the things they do. And by that I mean things they do that piss me off.

Now it’s fair to say that smugness, ignorance, disrespect and plain rudeness are personal traits I have no time for which is why I tend to avoid trains whenever possible. For it is here that I usually find the very worst excesses of bad manners. Quite why people feel the need to regale an entire train carriage with inane details of their sad lives by talking loudly on their phones escapes me and as for ‘males’ who remain happily seated whilst leaving a female to stand…. Grrr!

However, trains are not the worst places. Roads are far worse and it is on motorways particularly that people do things that sometimes have me boiling with rage. Chief among these, and quite possibly the most irritating thing I ever encounter, are those morons who drive along in the middle lane oblivious to the chaos they cause. I hate them, all of them.

It genuinely escapes me how people can be so stupid. Do they not understand that by driving along in the middle of a three lane motorway, they are effectively blocking off an entire lane to other motorists? How many times have you come up behind slow moving traffic only to find that at the head, driving along in the centre of three lanes, is some idiot in a Nissan Micra or a people carrier? And why do they do it anyway? Are they incapable of driving in the left hand lane? What is the thought process of driving along an empty motorway and deciding to drive in the middle instead of on the left?

The sad thing is, the people with the power to deal with this (the government!) seem loathe to do anything about it preferring instead to focus their attentions on what to my mind, are less pressing matters such as the economy and world peace. Even the police seem incapable of acting in spite of the fact that these people are driving without due care and attention (and let’s face it, by causing an obstruction that’s exactly what they are doing!) and quite why those signs which seem to spend most of the time warning me of impending doom ahead are not being used to tell these dickheads to drive with a little bit of consideration for everyone else escapes me.

What really annoys me is that I am reduced to flashing them to get out of the way when in reality, what I really want to do is utilise the skills honed in my stock car racing days and simply spin them off into oblivion. Yet if I were to do that, I’d be the one hauled in front of the courts! How does that work?!?!

And of course if they do deign to get out of your way (only to move back the second you have passed) they have the temerity to look at me as if I’m either mad or some kind of irritation. Which merely makes me even more rabid.

If there is an answer, I don’t know what it is. But I tell you one thing, if someone ever invents a way of letting me inform a guilty party exactly what I think of them as I drive past, I will be the first in the queue.

Rant over… that’s better. For now anyway.

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