Hi young people, hope you are having a good day, it’s Friday 11th August today, quiet here, going for some Borders country air this afternoon since I’ve just done some hoovering. Hope fully by the time you are of an age when you can have a view, hoovering will be a crime against humanity, mostly huwomanity I guess.
I’ve had a good week meeting up with a couple of friends, lunch and long discussions over how expensive eating out has become post COVID – see Google – a fish supper used to be £8.00 – £10.00 now its regularly £16.00. Time for another moan and groan. This is a skill, talent and habit that we have in the United Kingdom, moaning about anything, very often about nothing much.
Main highlight though was going to see Sandy in his show – one of his shows, he’s involved in three, 2 on stage, one in the production team – in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he had a big role in the musical ‘Young Frankenstein’. He was great- be proud of your brother and cousin girls – for he is the only boy. Sands also received his exam results as he finishes his sixth year, leaves secondary school. More ‘A’ results, the boy done good. Now we will see what the world brings as a bundle of surprises.
Anyhow, back to complaining, here is a particular tranche of the British citizenship that can be irritating to the highest order. I could say nearly all of them, it’s usually, often at least, about value for money. On holiday, for example. Folks with little money complain about how little they get for their cash, folks with spare disposable cash complain that they don’t get enough and sufficiently high quality in their purchases. This latter group also complain a lot about service, – too slow, ‘they don’t speak English’, sloppy service when bringing ‘2 soups’ – look up French and Saunders – and flat beer. The broad pattern is that the more cash you have the more arrogant you become.
The English abroad are awful on a number of fronts – language, food, accommodation, drunkenness, locals and the wearing of football strips, 90% of which no one recognises, no matter what nationality you claim. The violence is also a less than attractive element of ‘Brits Abroad’. I’m afraid the thread of racism and misoginy winds it’s way around the British people, home or abroad. Not pretty.
Lets be clear, the Scottish folks are as bad, at time worse and louder very often, no concern for others, bad language and not giving a dam about others. We Scots also have the Rangers- Celtic, protestant and catholic virus that is often taken abroad and applied liberally in pubs and other public spaces. It’s nasty and at times evil and is around all year round across Auld Scotia. So, moan , moan, moan!!!! Kind of like I am doing now.
However those of us in the grubber should always have on call our capacity to laugh at and with silly, funny, idiotic and simple folks. There is something amazingly ridiculous happening near you every hour of the day. Just keep your eyes and ears open, laugh with people, not at them and let it lighten the load. Some examples, here, from a complaints site.
OFFICIAL GROANS
“They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”
“On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.”
“We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”
“The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.”
“We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”
“It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time — this should be banned.”
“No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”
“I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”
“The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun.”
“I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends’ three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller.”
“The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the resort.’ We’re trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service.”
“When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”
“My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”
Bless.