Harbouring pet hate can be a burden greater
than the slight itself if we’re not careful. Once something or someone has
earned our informed wrath, each and every encounter assists a distillation
process whose end product is 140 degree proof bile that only matures with age.
We all suffer this to some degree.
Nobody is infinitely tolerant. Those who claim to be are either in denial and in
desperate need of help or simply haven’t been paying enough attention. Allow me
to demonstrate: Boris Johnson might be Prime Minister one day. See what I mean?
A few ill-timed words can render the worst nightmares momentarily real enough to
put us off our food, even when shorn of any context. Now try Donald Trump, Tony
Blair, Justin Bieber, Fred Goodwin; only words on a page but, boy, can they set
us off. It’s a deeply primeval defence mechanism; we instinctively recognise a
threat when we see it and our choices are reduced to a straight play-off
between flight and fight.
Keeping an eye on old Bojo isn’t
difficult, though. He makes sure of this by being everywhere at all times. But myriad
smaller, self-sustaining evils lurk around every corner, ready to mug our wits
in broad daylight. Vigilance is imperative if we want to stay sane.
It may surprise you to learn I have a
refined palate that can detect minor irritants less sensitive souls don’t
appreciate. Indeed, I am an avid collector of pent up annoyance and keep a
well-maintained cellar full of the stuff, from the cheapest shed-brewed poteen
to the finest Claret.
We can become so hyper-sensitised that
the merest shadow of our bêtes noires can provoke spontaneous anaphylactic fury.
For instance, merely writing the words Eurovision Song Contest makes me wonder
if invasion of Belgium might be an idea whose time has come around yet again; it’s
been happening on and off for millennia and one can see why.
I’ll bet East Europeans got a fright
when, having finally broken free of the yoke of totalitarianism, they
discovered that this abomination was considered a symbol of post-war European
harmony. I’m surprised they didn’t just cough politely, turn heel, rebuild the
Wall and construct a continent-wide Faraday Cage to shield comrades from this
nauseating bilge. This was what capitalism did to people? This was a fruit of
our Peace Dividend?
I have more than just an elongated
list. I have compiled a complete demonology, catalogued and cross referenced
with clinical taxonomical precision. This prepares me for the assaults on the
sensibilities that inevitably occur as a result of waking of a morning and
remembering where I am.
Tragically, I suspect the damage is
done and that this febrile condition is the result of exposure at critical
junctures in early development to dangerous quantities of untreated waste
products; a good many intentional products, too, come to think of it.
There was an abundance of source
material to ensure maladjustment in any vulnerable teenager in the 1970s, but
schools full of hooligans and psychos - not to mention the pupils, pretty well
all light entertainment, Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power and flared trousers
are perhaps amongst the most egregious lowlights of the decade when it all went
horribly wrong, though, as we know, there was worse to come; our tolerance of
that awful decade was to be rewarded with the 1980s. By now, though, I was
getting the hang of general purpose angst and haven’t looked back.
Sadly, my parents insisted on watching
TV news and left newspapers carelessly strewn about in full view of a delicate
boy at an impressionable age. The moths of stupidity have besieged my desk
light ever since.
It’s been a struggle, I can tell you,
but I’ve finally started to develop functional immunity to some of the more
noxious stuff. By and large, I’ve learned what to consume and what not to -
whatever I damned well please; where to be and where not to be - right here and
nowhere else; who to entrust my sensibilities with – a select few; who to be
wary of by default – fetch me the London phone book and we’ll make a start.
Mercifully, perhaps as a result of
some kind of fiendish cosmic joke, it was decreed that while pretty well
anything could set me off, I would have no intolerance to nuts. This is a
relief. They seem to be in everything these days, including nuts. It’s a sign
of how far we’ve come that we now actually itemise the ingredients of raw
vegetables. It’s unnecessary and wasteful of both energy and resources that we
are incessantly being asked to conserve and protect, no expense spared. And it’s
very annoying.
Each and every irritation has its own
perch on the tree of our increasingly complicated and fraught existence. Some are mere ephemera that gnaw the top-most
leaves just long enough to replicate before expiring. A good example might be
that infuriating habit recently imported in the fetid rucksacks of gap year
students returning from the Antipodes, a horrifying condition that causes the
afflicted to gratingly emphasise the last syllable of a sentence, thereby
making an otherwise perfectly clear statement sound like a question; “I fancy a
beer”, just in case you didn’t
know what beer was. If asking a question, the penultimate syllable is the
victim: “Is it 2 o’clock yet?”,
as if basic chronometry might be new to you.
There are only two possible
explanations for this, neither satisfactory. Either they suspect plainly
observable reality might be some kind of elaborate hoax and need reassurance
only a mother could give, or they believe their interlocutor to be a bit dim
and need confirmation that they’ve been understood. It’s the spoken equivalent
of pulling a face and needs ruthlessly stamped out.
Exposure to CQI - Colonial Questioning
Inflection - is a medical emergency which necessitates loud music to drown out
the internal echo and immediate application of alcohol, perhaps with a cold
shower just to be on the safe side. It’s deeply irritating, but the assault on
your wits is usually brief and causes no lasting damage other than an incessant,
plaintive “why?” ringing in your head. But you know it’ll be back sooner or
later, so you have to log it as you know well the dangers of it catching you
off guard and sparking an international incident.
Other annoyances are more robust and
agile creatures, brightly coloured, squawking parrots, lyre birds that can
mimic the sound of an approaching chainsaw. They can be entertaining for a
while, but when it’s day in, day out, repeats of Fawlty Towers and Dad’s Army,
say, any enjoyment you once experienced is evicted by a yearning for a new
species, one that Attenborough hasn’t already documented to extinction.
Our worlds are now crawling with
creatures whose sole purpose is to irritate the hell out of us and it’s got to
stop. In no particular order: people who start idly playing with their latest
rectangle when you thought they were talking to you alone, as if they’d far
rather be somewhere else speaking to someone else and were utterly bored with
your company, an insufferable rudeness I construe as an invitation to bugger
off and I now do just that; football minutiae dominating the news agenda on all
channels, those who believe Facebook to be essential to life, rap music,
kleptocrat banks, socially clueless governments we are stupid enough to dignify
with our votes, simple cupboards advertised as “storage solutions”, cold calls,
feral punctuation, stupid, ugly little foreign wars we have no business being
involved in, finally hearing confirmation that the Murdoch Corporation was
allegedly as sinister as you always suspected and wondering just why it took so
long when, really, there were clues………
Pet hates? Don’t start me.
