Start the day with a disagreement

I live less than two minutes' walk from work, but it was enough to get into an argument with a complete stranger. The moron was waiting for a bus, and occupying his time by emptying all the rubbish from his pockets onto the ground. It struck me that this particular mouth-breather was merely doing on a small scale what we're all doing on a civilisational scale. It also struck me that I might earn a punch in the face for saying something, but by that time my gob was already in action. I picked up his rubbish and loudly - and perhaps unwisely - offered to put them in the bin for him, at which he loudly told me to procreate off. No doubt I'm the only one to leave the scene feeling bad.

Found

A l'Oréal Shocking Volume Waterproof Moisturizer thingy. Not exactly lost, more thrown from a car window by its owner because it was empty, in a stunning display of public citizenship.

I'm at a staff research conference this morning, in the Lighthouse cinema. I'm on first, which at least gets the boring stuff out of the way. We're already running late - one of the three organisers has arrived, only 20 minutes late.

I see the day as a trap. Our new management will be taking notes. Anyone conducting research which doesn't attract external funding will be sacked. Anyone think of ways to parlay Welsh literature into EU/corporate funding? I'm presenting on an untranslated 19th century Welsh clergyman and academic today. Try to restrain your excitement…

Don't mind me, sometimes I get a little cranky

I like people. Most people. Some people, anyway. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not an undiscriminating misanthrope. There are groups with a permanent place in my Top Ten for Summary Execution - Tories, hippies, SUV-drivers. I'd like a t-shirt to flash reading 'you are an arrogant, selfish, polluting, greedy, egotistical, inadequate, shortsighted bastard (unless you're a farmer or builder)' but fear that they wouldn't be able to read the whole thing as they flash past en route between suburban home and suburban prep school. 

So anyway, apart from them, I like most people. Except for the three teenage girls who casually dropped their fast food wrappings on the floor in front of me as though there's no more natural place for rubbish - inconceivable to them that bins even exist, let alone should be used by the likes of them. 

No, the only person who really got to me today is a complete stranger I see every Monday. I queue up to get into the pool, so I'm already feeling slightly cranky. Waiting my turn, I idly gaze out over the car park where he sits in his highly-polluting car, warming up for his swim by having a cigarette. So he's driven to the pool and smokes as a preliminary. I want to smash his headlights in and then calmly explain that a walk and no cigarette would help him no end, and would leave the congested lanes for people who don't intend to poison themselves (and others), before dying expensively on the NHS. OK, so he's finished his cancer-twig. Then, EVERY WEEK, he strolls to the front of the queue and pushes in so aggressively that nobody says a thing. After that, he races to get changed first, grabs the widest lane and swims down the middle so that nobody else can share it. 

The final straw was after I left the pool today. Trying to cross the ring-road, who should shoot straight through the red light while I was on the road but this utter, utter wanker. At least I'm compensated by the knowledge that a fat smoker, dangerous driver and non-seatbelt wearer is probably going to die younger than me. Does that make me a bad person?

Urge to kill… rising.