Bafflement
The last couple of days have shown me that I just don’t understand the world at all. And that I’m a grumpy sod.
So, today’s list of things which baffle me includes:
Why twelve-year-old kids can’t be trusted with pencil sharpeners. How the Middle East situation could get any messier Sudoku. The game itself and its inexplicable popularity amongst people on the tube. I’ve never seen anyone filling one in anywhere else, but it’s pretty rare to get onto a tube train without seeing someone scribbling away. Men wearing business suits and trainers. I’ve seen scads of them over the last couple of days. Did I just not notice before, or is this the latest sweeping commuter trend? People who sit on a bus listening to music through their mobile phones with no headphones and the volume turned right up. The audio quality is at a level where you have no chance of working out what the song actually is, but they seem to enjoy it. It turns out that the easiest way to stop them is to kick the back of their seat in time to the music. Weirdly more effective than just telling them to shut up. Buskers on busses. Because the overcrowding and pungent aroma aren’t bad enough, so another form of sensory torture has been added to the bus journey repertoire. Historical dramas which use third-rate actors to dramatise the events that the narrator is describing. Are there actually people who think it enhances the experience? (I was vaguely planning to watch a programme about Catherine the Great tonight, but this phenomenon forced me to turn it off after five minutes.)