What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 3

Poodles really are a peculiar fork in the evolutionary tree. The Wikipedia article concerning them is one of the most ridiculous panegyrics ever written, to men and animals alike. Pudles, as the Old English wills it, are not water dogs: they are etymologically puddle dogs. How come this breed, deprived of any instinct for the most part, became the staple royal items to have? How did they rise to such prominence over, say, the basset hound? I can't imagine a lambda night watchman unleashing a poodle in the dark of night and shouting “Have at them, Troy!” Nor can I imagine them jumping overboard to save the life of a drowning man, nor sniffing their way through the toe of an avalanche. Mephistopheles making his entrance as a black poodle is as ludicrous as having designer dogs, or names such as the Scandinavian clip or the English saddle clip. Poodles were clipped in such fashion by French circus people who, for obvious comical effects, decided to make it look laughable. They succeeded beyond expectations.

The women – pardon me for pointing this out so near after Women's Day, but none of the menfolk have been reported to be clad in similar fashion – who dress themselves and their dog(s) in matching clothes are equally derisible. The interchangeability of the posture of the two is, on the other hand, if you picture it with reasonable accuracy, quite worthy of a laugh.

But enough of poodles, let me direct my irked pen to alternative targets. Others (men and women alike, I can't be picking on the same all the time – bar poodles, they deserve it) who get my goat are those who gesture with their phone as if the person they are talking to were in front of them. They draw aerial charts or point to such and such direction. I can't imagine the bewildered face of their interlocutor at the other end.

Equally irking are those irascible hoi polloi who comment on a movie at the cinema and/or chomp on pop-corn. I sometimes feel like packing an old shoe in my bag beforehand, in order to throw it at them. The cover of darkness shouldn't benefit mosquitoes only.

The effrontery of the rollerbladed post-juvenescent swooshing an inch past my elbow galls me to no end, but more nettling perhaps are the literary parasites who read from your book, above your shoulder, in the tube: their impatience at your slowness – whilst you're trying to enjoy the novel – is baffling. Had they got the nerve, they would turn the wretched page themselves. I drive them around the bend by flipping the page halfway, stopping in mid-air, pretending to finish the page in candid rapture and then turning around and ask: “You done? Because I can't wait to turn that page.” Life, sometimes, has such simple pleasures it would be a sin to let them pass.

The race – or should I say melee – to obtain the last parking space at any supermarket bears witness to the prodigious capacity of man – yes, usually men are up to scratch in this regard – to contrive ingenuous plans of action in a fraction of a second. The ensuing foofaraw between the protagonists more often than not makes your day and appends a flourish of newfangled contumelies to your vocabulary. Unfortunately, we don't usually have time to follow-up on any retaliation taking place once the two belligerents are in the said supermarket. Love is all around.

This being said, I still can't say I'm crustier than my great-grandma, and that means something.