James Complains About Quite A Lot Of Things

Although I tend to mock the whole idea of New Year’s Resolutions, January 2017 seems to have coincided with me ‘upping my game’ in blogging terms. I’ve been posting pretty regularly, a minimum of three times a week and on occasion four. Furthermore, although many of my blog posts have been in the form of bad poetry or bad art, Mondays have tended to be for a more considered, longer piece of writing.

That, people of the blogosphere, takes planning and effort.

Seriously.

It might not seem like it but those meandering Monday posts, with questionable grammar and no particular point, do actually take me a bit of time to produce. I generally take the whole weekend to ‘craft’ them.

Well ok I write the first draft on Saturday and then proof read it on the following Sunday.

And even then I usually manage to leave some fairly obvious spelling and grammar mistakes in the final post.

But the point is that I do take a little longer on Monday posts.

And this weekend, for various reasons, I didn’t have time to write anything.

So I’m writing this in lieu of a more thoughtful and considered piece, because even if it wasn’t an ‘official resolution’ I don’t want a little thing like ‘not having written anything’ to be a reason for my recent blogging streak to come to an end.

And while I usually like to use my ‘James Complains’ feature to complain in excessive detail about something that slightly irks me, today I’m going to complain about lots of things in much less detail.

So without further ado, here are some of the things that are bothering me at the moment:

1.       Brexit. I’ve complained about it before but I’m not over it yet. I’m what the Daily Mail might refer to as ‘a re-moaner’. I don’t object to being labelled a ‘re-moaner’. I am still moaning about it. I’m quite happy to acknowledge that. It was a bad idea to have a referendum and we as a nation made a bad decision. I will continue to ‘re-moan’ for some time to come.

2.       Donald Trump. I don’t live in the USA, but the POTUS is such a powerful global figure that ultimately his behaviour will still affect me. Plus because of Brexit, the UK is so dependent on good trade relations with the US that British politicians are lining up to fawn all over the maniacal loon.

3.       My uninspired list of things to complain about. Clearly both Brexit and Trump are massively annoying but frankly it should be obvious to anyone who reads my blog that I’d be annoyed about them. So there’s no good reason to put them on this list and by doing so I’m demonstrating a lack of imagination and creativity.

4.       The Superbowl. In the UK we do care about the fact that Trump is in charge of the US. It’s kind of a big deal. Do you know what American thing is not a big deal in the UK? American Football. We have our own football here. It’s better. Yet despite the fact that hardly anyone over here cares about the Superbowl, there’s loads of ridiculous hype about it. This year I thought I’d give it a go. But there was no way I was going to ‘not sleep’ on a Sunday night, which would have been the only way to watch it live. I was planning to watch it on the BBC IPlayer this evening. I might be watching it now if every news outlet I listened to this morning hadn’t already given me the result. Sounds like it was a great game too – I could have been a convert. I won’t be now because it doesn’t matter how exciting a game might have been, I’m not watching it if I already know the result. Seriously BBC, what a brilliant way to ensure that no-one watches something that you’ve invested a lot of time and money bringing to British telly.

5.       My ironing. I’ve complained about ironing before. I hate it. And I’ve got loads to do. I’ll been wearing my ‘emergency shirts’ this week. The ones that aren’t really ‘work shirts’ but look just about passable as work shirts when paired with a plain tie.

6.       The person in work that thinks they know more about my job than I do, even though they do a different job and aren’t in any way qualified to do my job. What’s that all about? It’s really annoying. Even if I did make them look a bit stupid in a recent meeting, which was admittedly quite fun, it would be better if they stuck to doing their own job and letting me do mine.

7.       Bin collection day. It’s changed. It used to be every Tuesday, alternating between recycling one week and general waste on the other. I knew how that system worked. Now it just seems to be random. Ok they sent me a calendar of collection dates at the start of the year, but if I’ve got to refer to a calendar to know when my bins are going to be emptied then the whole thing is too complicated. Let’s just go back to Tuesdays.

8.       The fact that the building that housed the baguette shop is still empty. Why did it have to close down? How am I supposed to function without the availability of freshly made baguettes, at a convenient distance from my house, when I occasionally want them?

9.       The fact that I took the wrong plastic container out of the fridge this morning and instead of two ham rolls for lunch I was faced with a (rapidly defrosting) bolognaise sauce that was intended for my evening meal. I had to go out for lunch instead. And now I have two ham rolls uneaten in the fridge. Yes, I could have them tomorrow but if you read last week’s post you’ll understand that I have a very efficient and organised grocery shopping schedule. There’s no place in that schedule for uneaten ham rolls.

10.   My annual mortgage statement. It’s not particularly unexpected, but it always depresses me to see how much I’ve spent in repayments compared to how much less has actually come of the total amount I still owe, once the interest has been added back on.

There we go then.

Ten things that are annoying me to varying degrees.

On a more positive note, my favourite sporting event of the year – the Six Nations – has begun and my beloved Wales began the tournament with a win.

Which is awesome even if they did only beat Italy, who are by far the weakest team in the competition.

A win is a win.

Just ask the New England Patriots.

Who won at a sport I will probably never watch.