Life's Little Irritations

What sort of irritations am I referring to? One I can mention is, during the summer, such as now, when we have warm weather, when we have the windows open to cool the house, you get bees and other flying insects coming in. Then they get stuck, trying to get out again, attempting to get through the glass of the window, not realising that you can't get through glass, and then, when you open the window wider to let the thing out, it refuses point blank to go out through the open window! Then the flitting and buzzing they make continues unabated and there seems to be nothing you can do to relieve it.

You put dirty laundry on in the washing machine. The machine finishes it's cycle, you hang the washing out to dry, and almost every time, no matter what you do, you find you have one lone sock that hasn't gone in the machine with it's partner. Invariably you get that one lone sock at the end of the wash-cycle, even when you go to put them in your sock drawer. WHY does this happen? How many odd, lone socks do I now possess? Or you go to put on clean socks in the morning, take out what you imagine to be a matching pair and then you find they don't actually match? Does it matter? Who's going to see they don't match? Nobody. It really doesn't matter. You probably don't realise until the night, when you change to go to bed. You then discover they don't match. Oh well, just another of life's little mysteries.

You go to the supermarket and spend a lot of time going round the store, putting items into your trolley. Once completed, you go to the checkout and load your items onto the conveyor belt. This takes some considerable time, but then the checkout malfunctions so you have to spend even more time taking each item off the conveyor belt and moving to another working check-out. Time and energy wasted. This invariably happens at one of those self-serve check-outs. As I've probably mentioned in an earlier blog post, it's bound to be the only one of these check-outs that is available as all the others are occupied and you've probably had to queue to get on one of them. The other similar event is when you need to use a lift, usually to get down to the carpark after you've done your shopping and then have an extremely full trolley. You go to use the lift, no doubt the other lift (there's usually two lifts, the other being in use, or out of service. Then you get in the lift, it's extremely full with other shoppers and their trolleys. Then, on attempting to press the button for your floor, the lift won't move, it's also out of order and it takes some time to extricate yourself from the lift and the have to push your trolley down to the carpark, going down various ramps and walk-ways.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. 'He's written about 'Life's Little Irritations' in earlier posts, under 'niggles.' Well, yes, perhaps I have. I have to admit that I find some 'niggles' in everyday life. I'm sure we all have in some way shape or form. I could go on. So I will.

Bottles and tubes that are difficult to open. Think those bottles that liquid hand-soap comes in. Those annoying pumps that come locked when you buy them. You're supposed to twist the pump to release the thing and they invariably refuse to unlock. Those plastic packets of various products, such as sweets, that you're supposed to get into by tearing across the top, but never do. You end up having to use scissors to cut the packet open.

How about traffic lights? How long should they remain on red? In Milton Keynes we have very few. The ones near Sainsbury's do seem to take an age to change to green. There isn't that much traffic to let through, so why does it take so long? Are they set at a certain length of time? Do they alter the length on how much traffic moves past? Some sort of computer system that measures the amount of traffic and alters the timing accordingly?

Ticket machines, in carparks particularly. You have to put coins in said machine, you hunt through your pockets for the correct amount and then put these in the slot in the machine. The whole lot fall through and come out of the slot at the bottom of the machine. You have a £1 coin, the new style coin. The machine refuses to accept it. It also falls through. You would assume that all the parking  ticket machines would have been adapted to take the new-style coins. But no . . .

Life's Little Mysteries

There are all sorts of little mysteries which seem unexplained. For example, why is it when you do the washing-up (by hand in our household. We don't have a washing-up machine. Frankly a waste of time and money. Just an excuse to load the thing up and forget it and then spend time emptying it. You still have to rinse the dishes and cutlery and whatever else you need to wash, so why not just wash it and dry it and then put it away?) You spend an age doing the job and at the end, when you've dried everything and it's back in it's place, you find a single lonely teaspoon at the bottom of the bowl? Why does the washing-up liquid make so much foam, which doesn't actually have any purpose at all? I have worked in industrial kitchens and used professional washing-up liquid which is very effective and has absolutely no foam. The foam doesn't have any purpose other than just being a sort of 'extra' which takes ages to rinse away. It doesn't make the liquid work any better, or, indeed, at all. It's just that we've been conditioned to have foam when you use washing-up liquid. I expect the manufacturers put an ingredient into Fairy liquid and other similar products, that has no other purpose than to create foam.

Not just teaspoons being left after washing-up. How about when you do clothes washing, you invariably get one lone sock left in the drum of the washing machine or a pair of underpants or knickers, when you've finished the job and hung the laundry out to dry. I always seem to find I haven't got a complete pair of socks to peg out or at the end of the whole operation, when I come to put the clothes away, nothing more irritating than having one or two lone socks which don't have a partner. Nothing more annoying when you need a fresh pair of socks, you open the drawer, and all you can come across is one or two single socks. This very thing happened this morning when I did some washing and I had two socks which didn't have partners.

Why do we get telephone calls, and when you pick up, there's NOBODY THERE! You just get a sort of 'burr-burr' sound. What IS that all about? Is there someone on the other end? Are they listening? If so, are they little green men from some far-off planet? It does make me wonder. When you get those really annoying calls from some company trying to sell you something and they seem to know something about you which perhaps you didn't know about yourself or they're just being 'nice' in order to sell you whatever, I begin to wonder how much information is shared by companies you've signed up to legitimately. Then there's those calls which are obviously scams. Telling you there's a problem with your computer. Usually your Windows computer, which I don't have. Just trying to phish (if that's the correct term) in order to get your personal details so they can send a virus or something worse to infect your computer.

Where does all the junk mail we receive come from? Most of it's definitely not for things I signed up for. I never asked for it to be sent. How do they know that I might be interested in buying a rather expensive vacuum cleaner that you can charge up and it comes with a special version that you can use to clean your car? We have a perfectly efficient vacuum cleaner and certainly don't need another one, thanks all the same.