Forget to say please or thank you every time you are given anything (even a bill!)

Refuse to talk about the weather.

Mildly disagree with them.

Jump a queue.

Keep saying ‘after you’  rather than going through the door that’s been opened.

Offer postive ideas and solutions to everything they moan about.

Ban the colours beige and magnolia.

Weep loudly in public.

Admit that you hate animals, especially dogs and cats.

Praise the current Government.

Act happy in a post office

It’s snowing hard outside. A bit unseasonal but snow is always magical especially now it is falling down on the blossom trees and primroses.

We have it so rarely that everyone feels a tad excited about it, without wanting to admit it.

We quite like disrupted trafffic, being unable to get into work and schools closing and would not want to be so used to it that everything continued as normal.

It’s a great excuse to have a good moan about something we are actually enjoying and when it stops and the fallen snow turns to slush we wish it would last longer while telling each other ‘thank goodness we can get back to normal.’

Is it just me or are many UK markets a bit depressing?

I’m not talking about large popular, specific or occasional ones like Camden (as was,) Riverside, Portobello, Aberystwyth, Totnes; or Farmers markets, but your local or regular Saturday market with random stalls full of plastic toys, uninspiring pictures, shiny clothes, pet food, plastic handbag racks, sad cheap cards and the odd meat van or product seller shouting ever decreasing prices for their wares.

The best seller is usually the fruit and veg stall, which, if you are lucky has good quality produce and lots of offers as the day wears on.

Families mooch around, many trailing dogs or pushing prams, but nobody seems cheerful or happy even on the sunniest of days.

Visitors to Britain expecting a vibrant, colourful market, full of exciting produce, sounds, smells and stalls with traditional preserves, home made breads, pasties and pies, good quality clothes and household goods, wooden toys, old fashioned sweets and pottery will be grimly dissapointed.

Why do we accept so much less than the best? Are we apathetic? Is it because we happily buy junk at inflated prices? Why are our markets laden with crap, and worse, why do we buy it?

I popped out to get something for lunch from a local Tesco Express as I had nothing in. Or so I thought.

The reality is that I had vegetables, frozen veg, cheese, pasta, potatoes, various tins, butter, milk, eggs and all the basics such as oil etc. I had plenty, yet wasted petrol and time to get more.

Obviously I had nothing in that I wanted or could be bothered to cook. I wonder how many trips, in households throughout the country/and other wealthy countries where this also applies. How spoilt we’ve all become, so fast.

A typical week’s ration for 1 person for a week in 1942 thus:-

Bacon and ham: 4oz (100g) Around one shilling and sixpence worth of meat:
Cheese: 2oz(50g) sometimes it went up to 4oz (100g.)
Margarine: 4oz (100g)
Butter: 2oz (50g)
Milk: 3 pints(1800ml) occasionally dropping to 2 pints (1200ml). 1 packet of dried ‘household’ milk per four weeks.
Sugar: 8oz (225g).
Jam: 1lb (450g) every two months.
Tea: 2oz (50g). (half a packet or the equivalent of 15 tea bags)
Eggs: 1 fresh egg a week if available but often only one every two weeks. 1 packet of dried eggs every four weeks.
Sweets: 12oz (350g) every four weeks.

No conclusion here, just the hope that I think twice before concluding that I have no food in the house,  and buying more.

Easter Day and lovely old churches nationwide will have treble or more congregation than they get for the rest of the year apart from Christmas.

Everyone will enjoy traditional Easter hymns and the story of Jesus rising from the tomb. Then they’ll go home to their huge roast and the meaning and the story will be forgotten.

But why do people turn up to church at Easter? If they are atheists, then why would they? If they are not sure then is it to lay some kind of claim on Christianity, just in case it all turns out to be true? If they do believe then are they too lazy to get up more than once or twice a year?

On the other hand, churches are heaving with those who go for the social interraction, to have a role to play, to make themselves feel good and other reasons which have nothing to do with believing the gospel message.

Still, Tesco is closed on Easter Day so maybe that explains the rise in church numbers.

Prepare ye for a perilous, wearisome journey with battling drivers, as everyone ‘gets away’ for a break and then ‘goes home’ a couple of days later, exhausted after planning, packing, travelling and cramming in days out - only to find they are mingling with hoards of others who had the same idea.

Prepare ye also for the supermarket store where shelves will be stripped by those preparing for the four day seige, queues will stretch endlessly, and the last of the cheap Easter Eggs will be bought up by the person in front of you, leaving you with a choice of little cream eggs or the most expensive costing quadruple the amount you planned to spend.

Prepare ye also for an Easter meal of happy families, long walks, board games, boring television programmes, squabbles and too much chocolate.

Prepare ye to return to work, shattered.

Households are recycling their socks off while factories, businesses and even some schools and colleges have not even started.

Junk mail has not been banned.

The paperless office is a joke. Everything is printed out and filed and businesses have huge stores of archived twaddle.

Stores are finally being encouraged not to use plastic bags, yet food bags, freezer product packages, bin liners, nappy bags and dog poo bags have not been mentioned.

Most bins are made of plastic.

This train of thought was a result of junk mail from a water filter company which came in a clear plastic bag and contained various  stickers which stated:- ‘I’m an environmentally friendly cartridge‘ ‘recycle now,’ ‘better for you, better for the environment.’ Unfortunately these stickers were plastic. Enyaaaaaaaaaargrrrrraha!

Typically English mixture of stately home with grounds and woodland, wildfowl reserve, crafts workshops and a motor museum. I must admit it was a good day out despite the sinister black swan that looked as though it was going to take a chunk out of my leg at any moment.

Cool huh?

Beefeaters , guarding the palace and keeping a botox face

Footballers from small local teams where family supporters huddle in the wind and the rain to cheer them on, pubs with wide screen tv’s and cock-eyed punters cheering and belching , huge stadiums where faithful supporters droan the team anthem.

Morris Dancers…the bells, the bells!

British Bobbies. A rare sight on foot, and somehow in cars they aren’t bobbies.

Women from the WI (Women’s Institute) They really do make cake and jam and meet in church halls.

Men in bowler hats. Very few now , but still an image of the English. Must be something to do with the shape of the bowler-hatted head

Middle aged women on bicycles with baskets. Not necessarily nosy and into solving mysteries.

Cricketers in white on a village green where the sun always shines and cucumber sandwiches abound.

Milkmen. Bottles of milk placed on your doorstep - it sounds magical and historical already!

Horsey Dog walkers … or doggy horse riders! The horse/dog set wearing tweed and snorting as they laugh.

Cockney market traders. Rollaarp! Ieem not askin’ a tenna, not eeeeven a fiva, Ieeem not eeeeven goingta ask fooooar quid. No ladissandgenlarmen I can offa you this for the amayzing and once only price of thurreee pounds and fifty pence-!

Debutantes
Partying and clubbing by night, attending spas and beauty parlours by day, then they get married, and and go partying and clubbing at night and attend beauty parlours by day!

Crabby Pensioners at Bus Stops (or in Post Office Queues)
Hardly surprising given the draughty unwelcoming shelters, late buses and long queues.

Goofy Vicars well meaning, affable and dim.

Old Maids. School teachers with slightly pointy noses.

The day to day irritations that don’t ruin our lives but raise our blood pressure and our hackles and add to the quota of moans and grumbles circulating in daily conversation.

Council tax.

Road works

Speed Cameras

Petrol Prices (also gas and electric)

British Telecom

Vandalism

Builders

Waiting in for tradesmen or deliveries

Late trains or buses

Litter

Nosy neighbours

Noisy neighbours

Charity tin rattlers

Junk mail

Telephone marketing

Call centres

Binge drinkers

Late post

Un-gritted roads

MP’s