Memoirs of a Cynical Twenty-Something

Is it me or do people seem to lack basic social understanding?
I put forward this situation which occurred this very evening…

Sat in our local bar having a lovely drink and enjoying some comedy, when we moved out of our seats but for a few moments and when we turned back around, a group of youngsters, fresh out of nursery school, sat in our places and pushed our stuff away from them. In fact some actually sat on our friend’s handbags and coats using them as cushions.
Do people lack understanding of society’s signals… do we actually have to write signs and hang them on our chairs for the baboon nation of dolts to try and figure out when still all they will do is poo on their hands and throw it at the sign in confusion. Forgive me if I am wrong but a coat on a chair and a drink in front of that chair on the table is a universal sign for SOMEONE IS SITTING HERE ASSHOLE!

So I decided, because I am a pussy that I would go back to the table get my stuff and make a point of moving…

I walked over to the flock of seagulls at our table and leaned over grabbing my drink and coat, turned to them and said… “thanks for moving us, that’s great…” gave them a wink and then a look of, I am above you in life because you are nothing, and then moved my stuff to another table, the rest of the group in turn made a point of it and moved their stuff giving the look of shame at the seagulls until we had all moved.

Do they teach basic decency in schools… maybe they should...?
… But then again would it be a waste of time…

To quote Frankie Boyle the great comedian…

“It’s like teaching a monkey to be a butler, you come home expecting your ironing and washing to be done and he’s shit all over the walls… because he’s a monkey!”

Everybody is talking about what they are doing for Valentines Day… were going to this place and were going to watch this… I just don’t get it…

To me, Valentines Day is just another day of the year where someone a long time ago said, this is the one day a year where romance is in the air and all couples should do something nice and all single people should find a date… It is another day, just like Christmas day that has been buggered by someone in an office somewhere who said; let’s make more money of the saps below because we can.
I consider myself a romantic, and I believe, call me naive that all men are romantic at heart, maybe not all of them are in contact with that part of themselves but that’s not the problem here. The problem is that once again our society is scheduling a day out of its busy schedule to tell and show the person your love, that you love them. It should not exist, why should my girlfriend only get flowers or poetry or chocolate from me on one day a year, or why should it have to be that specific day… why do we allow ourselves to be told that we have to do something special for Valentines day… My girlfriend was ill the other day so back on my way from town to home, I bought her some flowers to cheer her up… yet Valentines day demands more from us, right here right now…

An argument put forward the other day by one of my friends was that for some couples it is a day set aside for them to re-light the fire of romance after they have had kids and a mortgage and not had time for romance… I don’t like the excuse of I have no time… everyone has a few minutes of a day to tell someone how they feel or cuddle before bed… Romance should not be tacky, and yet we have allowed the corporations to make it that way. I am waiting for Valentines Day this year in anticipation to see if Facebook takes the next step and provides you free gifts to send to your loved one to let them know, although they are sitting the other side of the room from you, that you love them.

I guess my problem is not so much Valentines day… but the way our society has crippled personal connections, I read one persons comment on the Facebook the other day, which said, ‘I’m leaving Facebook because it is too impersonal, I want to go back to the good old fashioned communication of Text and Email’ after laughing considerably, I realised how sad this was. Letters, hand written letters are old fashioned and personal… maybe even a phone call… but moving from one formatted text to another is no statement and no change…

I’m worried that Valentines Day will become a mandatory point of the year, where we get told, not sure by whom, that we have to be romantic, when just like the good spirit of Christmas, should be something we do all day, every day, all year round. It is not other peoples duty to tell a couple when to be romantic, nor should we have got to the point in our world where we are so busy and rushed we have to mark a day a year in our calendar to be romantic because the rest of the year, we are to caught up in our world of hectic to care for the one we love. Don’t let that happen, if you’re going to do something for Valentines day… make it personal and not commercial… and please don’t forget, it doesn’t have to be, just one day a year.

A students life is enriched with many adventures and mishaps, Water fights in the early hours, or even getting blind stinking drunk, puking in somebody else’s house then being put in a wheelbarrow and taken downtown. However there is one thing we all have to deal with that really does suck, in fact it’s possibly a students worse nightmare… Public Transport!

As students it is our obligation to return home in one weekend, visit friends and family, realise home isn’t quite the same, and then return back to University because, you really do need to get that final assignment done. This is quite a challenge, especially if you do it most weekends, but the one thing that would make life so much easier over those 3 little days is if your train wasn’t run by a monkey on acid. Let me point out how bloody annoying, the British train system is when you are a student.

Scenario One; Sunday morning, you wake up, laze about, say goodbye to your mates down the pub, get home for a lovely roast and then pack your bags because, why would you do it the night before when you can rush in the morning? Your mum drops you at the station; you get their ready for the train but wait… its delayed. Your perfect timing of getting back for early evening, just in time for the pub quiz, is ruined! Some idiot has decided to delay your train by 43.3333331 minutes… making your entire schedule go tits up.

Scenario Two; You catch the train, its on time, everything feels good. You have a comfortable seat and an extra one for your bag. The granny smelling of cat and wee is five seats down from you, and the weird guy with nose hair always on the phone has been shot dead… fantastic. But wait… the idiot is back again and he wants to ruin your life. This time, he’s decided to close the track ahead… and replace it with a bus system… a crappy bus system. A system that either involves a knob with a clipboard telling you “THIS BUS!” when really it isn’t, or an extra long journey because the driver wants to take the scenic route and pick up every other person on the coast… oh and this time, granny and the nose hair bandit are sat next to you.

So this my fellow students is what really grinds my gear about our relationship with the transport system… The stupid idiot train company and its stupid ways of annoying us.