Pet Hates - How do you phrase yours?

Is the cold, grey weather getting you down?
Are you having a hard time at work?
Are you suffering from C21st century angst, your midlife crisis, teenage angst or are you simply having a bad day?

Here’s something which is inherently negative but which might just be therapeutic or catharthic.

Make a list of your TOP TEN PET HATES.

Be venomous. Consider how much these things annoy you.

Then pass the list onto a few trusted e-mail correspondents and they can read your list, confer with you on the extent to which they agree with you, and then compile a list of their own.

Try it.

Don’t bottle it up.

Fill in your name and write your list… and let me know what you think of mine.

My name is CL and my top ten pet hates are:

1. Boy racers. What is the point of these road-hog madmen? They drive too fast, they take both sides of the road, they tailgate you and then overtake when it’s not safe to do so. They don’t deserve to be on the road, and yet they think they own it.
2. Cats. Sneaky, slithering animals, they rub against your legs only because they want food. Make no mistake. They’d eat you if it came to a choice between doing so and going hungry. Don’t trust them an inch.
3. Cheap, gold bling. The sovereign ring, the chunky chain, the identity bracelet. The man who jangles as he walks, and whose t-shirts end up with cheap rust marks. It’s enough to make you shudder.
4. The “white jeans and stilettos” Liz Hurley look. Impractical and unattractive, this look shows up every bump of flesh and is purely for those who have nothing to do but lie around thinking about how they look. It should be bleached right out of the real world.
5. People who think that tv is real life. This includes the teenagers who believe in Friends – that a job as a waitress or a bad singer or actor will give you the perfect life in that lovely loft apartment in New York.
6. That adenoidal gasping thing that Gordon Brown does. It just makes me shudder. It’s as simple as that.
7. Eastenders. It’s so miserable. I suppose it does serve a purpose in that it can be reassuring – after a bad day, watch an episode of this and you’re instantly reassured that you’re not that badly off after all. But seriously – how do so many thousand people do it – follow a soap which, basically, involves balding meatheads and their bottle-blonde attachées running from one scene to the next, screeching the immortal phrase “Woss goin’ on!” at the tops of their voices?
8. Certain times, certain voices, on local radio. You know the sort of thing. You get it everywhere. There’s that woman with the patronising voice: one syllable from her sends you diving under your bed, stuffing your fingers in your ears and pulling the duvet down after you for protection. Or there’s the early morning “Jesus Rock” on a Sunday morning: enough to make the night before stick in your throat. Or maybe just the bland, middle-of-the-road playlist, with far too much repetition.
9. Smug people. They probably are, let’s face it, better than me. Holier than thou. But that’s no excuse for walking around with that smug look – that Baby On Board car sticker, subtext “look at me – heterosexual, normal, functional, fertile. You deserve to be in a car crash – I don’t. Because I’m great.”
10. Finally. Spoilt and precocious children. Now, don’t get me wrong on this one. Children are a great joy. They’re a social necessity, yes, but they’re a joy as well. Except for some. And what’s worrying is, that that “some” is getting larger. And larger. You know the kids I mean: you’ve seen them. They don’t throw tantrums much, because they don’t need to. Instead, they coldly, confidently, calculatedly inform their parents of just why they need to obey their orders. “You see, mum: those jeans won’t be there next Saturday if we wait, and we don’t want that. Do we.”


Now it’s your turn.

And I hope it’s therapeutic for you…