Unreasonable irritation with the trivia of life

I was driving home from the station, and thought I should write some more pointless stuff in my entirely neglected and unread blog. Well, what I should actually be doing is submitting my expenses to my accountant, but I’m too generally irritated by life to do so.
I hate standing on public transport, slowly making my way to a job I despise, working with people I have little in common with. What’s the point? All the extra money I earn is only consumed by booking holidays I wouldn’t otherwise go on, because I wouldn’t constantly feel such a desperate desire to get away. The general frustration of doing this for twelve hours a day means that I spend almost all my time trivially resenting things, and having opinions on a huge range of other people’s choices, opinions and actions. I hate people who book restaurants on Valentine’s Day. What is wrong with them? Do they like walking around with “boring sucker for shit service at extortionate prices” stencilled to their face?

I hate people who say that politics has nothing to do with their lives. Do they really take no interest in what they are paying tax for? Or how their country behaves in the world? Or what risk they personally run of being conscripted in the third world war that will result from the craven procrastination and appeasement all our politicians engage in when they talk about Putin?  And people who say that we all got on perfectly well having babies with no medical assistance, because “it’s worked perfectly well for thousands of years”. Yes, it’s worked perfectly well for the 40% of children who used to survive past the age of 5 in this country, 150 years ago, and perfectly well if you’re not one of the 800 women who die in childbirth in Africa, now, every single day.
So I was driving along, thinking about all the idiots in the world, and a song came on the radio that I automatically turned up because I always find it so catchy. Of course, mortifyingly, it was Blurred Lines. I hate that song so much, and hate myself for liking the way it’s put together. The DJ at my wedding played it. You’d think he would figure that those lyrics aren’t really going to be very popular at a wedding, but no one else seemed to mind. It really annoyed me. What blurred lines? I thought blurred lines was kind of an excuse for rapists, like “no means yes”, “playing hard to get”, “leading me on” etc.  But then on the same day I also read that the CPS has issued some weird- sounding guidelines stating that one of the measures of rape is whether the man actively obtained consent, rather than assuming it was given if it wasn’t denied. So it’s simultaneously acceptable to write a song which is basically about date rape, but not acceptable to assume consensual sex involves two people silently enjoying a moment, without double-checking that she’s not somehow failed to notice the sex bit. In that case, both I and probably everyone I know has been raped. Sure, it’s pretty awkward if there is so much alcohol involved that “silently” means “unconsciously”, but you’ve got to be a pretty weird guy (and the definition of “consensual” indeed very tenuous) if you enjoy inanimate objects.

I should find some clever way of wrapping this rambling argument up, but it’s Sunday night, and I have to get up and go to work tomorrow. Only another eight weeks, which should be great, but when I stop working and go on maternity leave, I’ll be trying to entertain a toddler while waiting for his sibling to arrive, which also fills me with a certain trepidation. And irritation with pretty much everyone. Did I mention I hate Melanie Phillips? Well, I hate Melanie Phillips, why did The Times hire her?? That’s a whole new topic.