Grumpy grumpy angry time
I've not felt such pure white hot rage against complete and utter strangers for oooh, at least about a couple of days.
Pub tonight. Special DJ set that we'd gone along to listen to especially. Fairly subdued attendance between 10 and midnight, then suddenly at about quarter past 12 a massive pack of people large enough to populate a small village suddenly shuffled their way in. Bar staff downed their crosswords and got pumping. Encouraging stuff, as I wasn't looking forward to having to avoid eye contact with the DJs for the rest of the night, since doing so may well have been to mutually and silently concede that "This isn't really happening tonight is it".
A small gaggle of youths pulled up on the table next to ours. Seemed ok. We charitably let them have the spare chairs round our table and everything seemed hunky dory. They then proceeded to completely box us in with their arrangement of chairs as more and more of their pointless mates turned up, each one slightly more stupid looking, drunk and gormless than the last. One of them sat - the full two arsecheeks - on top of my bag. A quizzical "erm, excuse me?" from me and a muffled apology followed. Fair enough, I thought. I'm always dropping the full weight of my posterior squarely on top of other people's property, as if it were a particularly unloved toilet seat. Happens all the time. All the ruddy time.
They were of student age and all the men in the group had full beards (just what is it with this whole mere boys with full beards business?). It may help to point out that this did not endear them to me. They were excessively, self-importantly noisy, oblivious to the existence of those around them and most of them ranged from being slightly to severely overweight. One of the women was actually large enough to be the size of the two fattest men in the group combined. Naturally, it was her long suffering seat boxing us in. Looked like it was fat selfish cretin o'clock and nothing was going to stop them. Still.... live and let live, I thought. The grinding action of my teeth by this point would suggest this notion would be short-lived.
Slowly but surely, it dawned on me that two of the corpulent cockends were eating fast food, food clearly not served by the pub on account of it being a) 'fast', b) 4 hours after the kitchen had shut and c) contained in sick-yellow polysterene trays. Who brings a takeaway burger and fuck-you size doner kebab into a pub and brazenly eats it at gone past 12 midnight? You take that shit home, you greasy twats. So potent was the funk of gherkin and gristle from their disgusting slagheap of piss artist's cuisine, I was expecting someone to 'have a word' at some point and show them the door but my misanthropic evil-wishing was in vain. The bar staff were of similar age and ilk and the bellends were probably 'mates' given carte blanche to treat the place as if it were their living room. Well done guys, give yourselves a massive pat on the back, that's if you can reach around that far.
You know that special brand of everyday wanker behaviour that's just so wholly and universally antisocial it cuts right through any objectively conceivable path of social, cultural, religious or political reasoning? Like on sunny beaches, jet skiing really close to folk just trying to have a quiet paddle. Or on roads, cycling at high speed through red lights and weaving tightly round people trying to cross. Or on public transport, pushing the volume of your brainless and percussion-heavy cunt music right up to the highest it will go on your miniature handheld multimedia-in-a-can git machine, to the point where the crappy little speakers can barely withstand a din they clearly weren't designed to handle - much like the eardrums of the unfortunate souls forced to share the same breathing space for seconds, minutes and hours. Well, that.
Eventually we managed to move tables and upon leaving I made a point of giving a cold, contemptuous stare at burger boy as he gormlessly gazed back, chewing and wondering what the fuck was going on as he manifestly failed to clock there was now a full free table for him and his grotesque pig replica chums to indulgently huff, puff, scoff, belch, fart and bellow their neverending stream of loud beardy twat content around.
Fortunately there was enough of the night left to overcome this shameful indignity and concentrate on getting gradually tipsier and contented as the wonderous sounds of epic music surrounded us.
I now realise that this was entirely my problem for being so intolerant and judgemental. I like to think myself a liberal leftie at the best of times, but frankly I'm rubbish at it. I really am like a sort of inverse Hitler sometimes, though I would never wish anyone dead. What's the point? Whether we like it or not, we've all got that number coming on the great deli queue of life.
Pub tonight. Special DJ set that we'd gone along to listen to especially. Fairly subdued attendance between 10 and midnight, then suddenly at about quarter past 12 a massive pack of people large enough to populate a small village suddenly shuffled their way in. Bar staff downed their crosswords and got pumping. Encouraging stuff, as I wasn't looking forward to having to avoid eye contact with the DJs for the rest of the night, since doing so may well have been to mutually and silently concede that "This isn't really happening tonight is it".
A small gaggle of youths pulled up on the table next to ours. Seemed ok. We charitably let them have the spare chairs round our table and everything seemed hunky dory. They then proceeded to completely box us in with their arrangement of chairs as more and more of their pointless mates turned up, each one slightly more stupid looking, drunk and gormless than the last. One of them sat - the full two arsecheeks - on top of my bag. A quizzical "erm, excuse me?" from me and a muffled apology followed. Fair enough, I thought. I'm always dropping the full weight of my posterior squarely on top of other people's property, as if it were a particularly unloved toilet seat. Happens all the time. All the ruddy time.
They were of student age and all the men in the group had full beards (just what is it with this whole mere boys with full beards business?). It may help to point out that this did not endear them to me. They were excessively, self-importantly noisy, oblivious to the existence of those around them and most of them ranged from being slightly to severely overweight. One of the women was actually large enough to be the size of the two fattest men in the group combined. Naturally, it was her long suffering seat boxing us in. Looked like it was fat selfish cretin o'clock and nothing was going to stop them. Still.... live and let live, I thought. The grinding action of my teeth by this point would suggest this notion would be short-lived.
Slowly but surely, it dawned on me that two of the corpulent cockends were eating fast food, food clearly not served by the pub on account of it being a) 'fast', b) 4 hours after the kitchen had shut and c) contained in sick-yellow polysterene trays. Who brings a takeaway burger and fuck-you size doner kebab into a pub and brazenly eats it at gone past 12 midnight? You take that shit home, you greasy twats. So potent was the funk of gherkin and gristle from their disgusting slagheap of piss artist's cuisine, I was expecting someone to 'have a word' at some point and show them the door but my misanthropic evil-wishing was in vain. The bar staff were of similar age and ilk and the bellends were probably 'mates' given carte blanche to treat the place as if it were their living room. Well done guys, give yourselves a massive pat on the back, that's if you can reach around that far.
You know that special brand of everyday wanker behaviour that's just so wholly and universally antisocial it cuts right through any objectively conceivable path of social, cultural, religious or political reasoning? Like on sunny beaches, jet skiing really close to folk just trying to have a quiet paddle. Or on roads, cycling at high speed through red lights and weaving tightly round people trying to cross. Or on public transport, pushing the volume of your brainless and percussion-heavy cunt music right up to the highest it will go on your miniature handheld multimedia-in-a-can git machine, to the point where the crappy little speakers can barely withstand a din they clearly weren't designed to handle - much like the eardrums of the unfortunate souls forced to share the same breathing space for seconds, minutes and hours. Well, that.
Eventually we managed to move tables and upon leaving I made a point of giving a cold, contemptuous stare at burger boy as he gormlessly gazed back, chewing and wondering what the fuck was going on as he manifestly failed to clock there was now a full free table for him and his grotesque pig replica chums to indulgently huff, puff, scoff, belch, fart and bellow their neverending stream of loud beardy twat content around.
Fortunately there was enough of the night left to overcome this shameful indignity and concentrate on getting gradually tipsier and contented as the wonderous sounds of epic music surrounded us.
I now realise that this was entirely my problem for being so intolerant and judgemental. I like to think myself a liberal leftie at the best of times, but frankly I'm rubbish at it. I really am like a sort of inverse Hitler sometimes, though I would never wish anyone dead. What's the point? Whether we like it or not, we've all got that number coming on the great deli queue of life.