Recently I purchased a new pair of shoes. This is not, in itself, an inherently unusual thing for me to do. I probably do it every 6-7 months. That’s generally how long a pair of shoes lasts in my experience. I buy my shoes for the purposes of work, being more inclined to wear trainers…
Category: James Complains
James Complains About A Lamentable Trip To A Supermarket
It’s been a while since last I blogged and in that time the world has gone from being predominantly concerned with a pandemic to being predominantly concerned with a war. This is hardly an improvement all things considered. Indeed so horrendous is the current status quo, that I need to acknowledge, from the outset, that…
James Complains About Christmas Greetings
And so we enter that surreal period of the calendar, known to me (and possibly to some other people) as Twixmas, when Christmas is sort of over, but it isn’t really over because we still have New Year’s Eve to ‘look forward to’. If I’m honest I’ve never been a big celebrator of New Year…
James Complains About Dominic Cummings But Not For The Same Reasons That Everyone Else Complains About Him
Occasionally on this blog I like to comment on the world of politics. Not often and usually with the kind of authority that you might associate with someone who exclusively reads tabloid newspapers. In real life I don’t read tabloid newspapers. I don’t read newspapers at all. I get all my information from the internet.…
James Complains About A Man Buying Potatoes (But Not Specifically Because He Was Buying Potatoes)
It’s Sunday morning as I write this (though I think it will likely be Tuesday before I post it) and I am, to put it mildly, quite irritated. Possibly I’d go so far as to say I’m angry. And frankly my state of vexation is over something so petty that I should be able to…
James Complains About Seven Delicious Biscuits
I enjoy a good biscuit as much as anyone. Pre-pandemic, when I used to have to attend meetings in person, I always felt slightly less hostile towards the meeting organiser if there were biscuits available. Not that biscuits could ever truly redeem any meeting, but when they were available they could help to ease…
James Complains About Nanny Plum’s Wand
My daughter’s increasing vocabulary is, I think, quite impressive. Even if we allow for a natural parental bias, of which I am happy to accept I am almost certainly guilty, I think Little Proclaims can say an awful lot for a twenty-month old. And thanks to a relentless effort on the part of Mrs Proclaims…
James Complains About A Loss Of Power
There’s no getting away from it – this post is an absolute shambles. This is partly because I started writing it on the 27th August and didn’t finish it. I genuinely meant to finish it, but I didn’t. And the bit I wrote on the 27th August doesn’t tell the whole story, but now so…
James Complains About Eggs-tremely Early Easter Eggs
By anyone’s standards, Christmas is well and truly over for another year. I, alas, had to go back to work on the 3rd January, which seemed a little early given that it was very much within the 12 days of Christmas. I’m not sure it should really be legal to make people work while Christmas…
James Complains About Not Having Written Anything
It’s the first Monday in September and like many teachers I’m obliged to go back to work after a six-week hiatus. Obviously, I expect very little sympathy from the non-teachers out there. Clearly, it’s hard, if you don’t get six weeks off, to sympathise with anyone who hasn’t had to go to work for the…
James Complains About Plumbers
Ok, it’s been a while since I did a ‘James Complains’, so just a reminder that nothing here is to be taken too seriously. There are bigger problems in the world than my relationship with plumbers. And if you are a plumber reading this, then please be aware that I am very much against the…
James Complains About The Bag Of Shame
Regular readers of this blog will know that I rarely write about work. This is for a number of reasons, not least of which is that this blog is very much my escape from the daily grind so to dwell on the quotidian minutiae of my profession would seem to be in direct contradiction of…
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…
James Complains About Free Stuff
It’s a popular maxim that ‘the best things in life are free’. I’m less than convinced that’s the case. I’m not sure that there’s much at all in life that’s actually free, let alone the best things. In fact, so convinced am I that the best things in life aren’t free, that I actually did…
James Complains About January
I’m writing this in what can only be described as a foul mood. Christmas now seems but a distant memory and, although I’m sure I enjoyed it at the time, the net result of the recent festive period is that I’m now poor and fat. The return to the daily grind has left me so…
James Complains About Healthy Eating
Much as it pains me to admit it, I’m already too old to ‘live fast and die young’. It’s no longer a goal I can achieve. So instead I’ve decided to ‘live at a moderate pace and die quite old’. In order to ensure that happens I’m going to start making sensible choices about my…
James Complains About The Perils Of Online Trouser Ordering
Recently I ordered a pair of trousers from a well-known online retailer. I order lots of stuff online but very rarely trousers. Normally I like to buy trousers in an actual shop because, in my experience, the various makers of trousers don’t seem to consult with each other when it comes to sizes and frankly,…
James Complains About Holidays
A few days ago Mrs Proclaims and I returned from our summer holiday. On the whole it was a thoroughly pleasant city break that was, at times, charming, fun and intellectually stimulating. Generally I enjoy most holidays and few things give me and my beloved more pleasure than poring over our old holiday photos and…
James Complains About Brexit
“The terrible irony is that the vast majority of the people who voted to leave are the ones who will be most adversely affected. The most extreme example of turkeys voting for Christmas I can recall.” This morning I was awoken gently by Mrs Proclaims who broke the news to me of Britain’s collective…
James Complains About The Referendum
Today there is a referendum on whether or not Britain remains part of the European Union. Today we as a nation decide whether to Brexit or not to Brexit. I wrote about it back in February. Back then it seemed like the distant future, but lo and behold, we’re here in the future.
James Complains About People Who Complain About Stuff
I’ve done it this time – a title loaded with irony. A contradiction in terms. If that isn’t ‘click-bait’ to the internet browsing masses then I don’t know what is. Ok I probably don’t know what is. Or rather I do know, and indeed my title is not it. But I’d wager it’s a little…
James Complains About Paw Patrol
I’m rarely up early on a Saturday morning. It is usually the day I allow myself a few extra hours in bed after the ravages of the working week. But with yesterday being Good Friday and consequently a bank holiday, I found myself well-rested this morning and thus I was up with the lark. Actually…
James Complains About Stupid Retailers
I do most of my shopping online. I’m not especially a cliché of masculinity that detests the idea of actually going into shops. I like going into shops and looking at stuff I might want to own. I’m very much a consumer in spirit and there are lots of things that I think, if I owned…
James Complains About The Demise Of His Smart Phone And The Relative Lack Of Inconvenience This Has Caused
It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was ‘celebrating’ the fact that I had written my very first blog post via the medium of phone and extoling the wonders of the modern world. Admittedly it seems like only a few weeks because it is, in fact, only a few weeks since I…
James Complains About ‘Black Friday – UK’
I’ve been in work today. All day. Because it is a normal working day in the UK. Yet according to my email inbox and various media outlets, today is ‘Black Friday’, the ‘busiest shopping day of the year!’ Was it ever thus?
James Complains About The Inappropriate Disposal Of Disposable Pants
To label the space in front of my house as a ‘garden’ would be somewhat overselling it. A tiny patch of gravel does not constitute a garden. Equally, a few years back, when the estate agent tried to convince me that it was suitable for ‘off-road’ parking, I was also a little sceptical. But my…
James Complains About Ironing
The Iron Man comic books and films would probably have captured the imagination of the public a little less if his main super power was removing the creases from clothes. But if someone offered to do that for me they would certainly be my superhero of choice. Given the options of battling the forces of…
James Complains About Unnecessary Seat Allocation
About a week ago Mrs Proclaims and I went to see Jurassic World. It was an odd thing for us to do as we were both relatively ambivalent about seeing the film when it first came out and going to the cinema is not something we do very often. I think we’re now at a…
James Complains About The Etiquette Of Waving When On A Boat
I often go on river cruises when I’m on holiday. I’ve been on river cruises in Paris (I technically lived in Paris at the time but so many years have passed that now it feels like it was just a really long holiday…) Amsterdam, Vienna, Boston (as in Boston – Massachusetts rather than Boston – Lincolnshire,…
James Complains About The Complexity Of Soup
Today’s diatribe is, as ever, about something trivial and unimportant that doesn’t really have any relevance to my daily existence. Nonetheless, it did dominate my thoughts for a whole thirty minutes or so earlier this week.
James Complains About the Most Comfortable Shorts In The World!
It’s a lovely Sunday afternoon as I write this. The sun is shining , the birds are quite possibly singing (I can’t hear any but it would seem churlish to rule out the possibility), and all seems right with the world. Which makes it really difficult to right a feature called ‘James Complains’.
James Proclaims! 