The rat-on-a-beach story from yesterday was responsible for quite a lot of sniggers on my part. Yes, I am aware exactly how dangerous coming into close contact with a rat can be, but given that no actual harm was done I feel that I can give in to my sillier side.
On the off-chance that she is actually reading this post, my apologies to the poor lady whose suntanning session was unceremoniously cut short – but the silly season has seriously hit (and you can see this by the number of ‘s’ I managed to cram into four words) and my readers deserve a break from the rants I’ve been having lately.
So, my list of three things that are guaranteed to scare the hell out of me more than coming face-to-face with some hapless rat on the beach.
Very young kids in smart restaurants or...wait for it... pubs. Yes, I know I’ll get all parents up in arms on this one, but seriously. Some places just were not meant to cater for the little ones, and smart restaurants and pubs definitely fall under this category.
No, I do not want to listen to little Beyonce reciting the alphabet right behind me, while I’m trying to enjoy my €15 starter and trying to conduct a decent conversation, thank you.
And I most certainly do not want young Ronaldo (or whichever footballer’s name happens to be in fashion nowadays, I’m a tad behind) evesdropping on my conversation while I’m sipping my tot. Conversations in pubs tend to get rowdy, and isn’t there a law against having kids in there anyway?
A rat, I can easily run away from. Ronaldo and Beyonce tend to stay irritatingly put. I’m lucky my favourite haunts know better than to allow this to happen.
Politicians with access to social media. Unfollowing them is not an option, because I do need to be aware what they’re up to, after all. Where else am I going to get fodder for this column, otherwise?
Social media updates by your garden variety politician are typically riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. And no, they’re not typos. When you constantly use ‘their’ and ‘there’ in the wrong context, it ceases to be a typo and becomes pure incompetence.
At first, these things tend to be funny. But when you can barely make out the gist of what said politico is trying to communicate, it ceases to be funny and becomes simply painful.
So yep, politicians getting creative online score higher than a close encounter with a rat on my fright-o-meter. Note to one particular politico: no matter how much your thesaurus insists otherwise, ‘effervescent’ and ‘explosive’ are not interchangeable. So no, the situation vis-a-vis migrants is not ‘effervescent’.
Bigots and fanatics. Quite simply, because you cannot have a logical debate with them. Whatever you say can and will be twisted around until it bears no link to what you actually meant.
When the blinkers are on, common sense is switched off, and this seems to be the case whenever certain topics are brought up on this island. Politics, migrants, religion, football...to name just four.
I’d go as far as to say that the fright-o-meter on this one reaches the same level as a zombie outbreak. Because really, there isn’t much difference in the mindset, is there?