5) The US postal service
Or at least the postal service in Brighton/Boston. Before I moved to London I requested to have all of my mail forwarded to me here. For the most part it's worked out okay. Until I received someone else's mail. This would happen from time to time while I lived in Brighton and I thought, okay fine, we do live on the same street, I can just leave it here and the mail person will take it to the right place or drop it off later. When the mail man/woman is in a rush, he or she might not stop to go "oh, whoops, this says building 19, but this is 15!" Plus the mail box only had our last names on it, how would he or she know that no Bridgett lived in building 15, apartment 6? A simple enough mistake. But, when mail gets forwarded, the post office has to put a sticker on the envelope, with the forwardee's name and address. This happens before the mail ever makes it to the building. The mail wasn't even meant for anyone in my former apartment and my name is certainly not Bridgett. So thanks post office, for inconveniencing myself and Bridgett. Plus the post office is then supposed to notify the sender that the recipient has moved, which just isn't true in Bridgett's case! And if this Bridgett has moved, she certainly hasn't moved to my house. If you can take time to put a sticker on an envelope, you can take a second to check the name.
4) People who take their cigarettes out before getting outside
This didn't use to bother me or phase me in anyway. Perhaps I just hadn't noticed people doing it. But recently I have noticed several people, either in cafes or shops taking out a cigarette before leaving. I even saw a student at my university's library take one out while at the self-issue station, which isn't even near the exit. They don't take out the cigarette pack but just one cigarette. I find this acceptable only when it is raining or extremely cold outside, which it is not today. This bothers me in the same way that people drinking crappy beer out of a can on a sidewalk at 2:00pm alone does. I understand that most people find some sort of relief/enjoyment/satisfaction from smoking, or at least they must have at some point or else they wouldn't have started in the first place (I don't know, maybe some people say 'mm delicious, I'll have the cancer please, followed by a slice of crappy skin/voice/lungs). But by taking a cigarette out of its pack well before stepping outside, when you know that it'll be a few minutes before you get to smoke it, shows that you have long since passed the enjoyment stage and have moved completely into the "I need it now" phase. Why should this bother me? Mostly because I don't like being bowled over by people who "need" their smoke and manage to then smoke their cigarette in the doorway. I would really prefer to make it out of the cafe/library without getting your fumes all over my coat.
3) Inconsiderate pedestrians
There are two types of inconsiderate pedestrians. The first category involves the "in a complete" rush type. They cut you off at every opportunity even if it means they wind up only passing one person on the escalator. For the most part, at Tube stations people who don't want to walk stand on the right of the escalator and people who do move up the left. Sometimes an obnoxious French person will stand on the left (believe me, it's almost always a French person), or someone with a small child will stand on the left. They will obligingly move over if you ask them nicely. However, if someone does not move, there is usually a good reason. The other day I saw a crowd of people asking this one woman and man to move so they could all get by. They all looked rather impatient. What perplexed me by these people was that the man blocking the way clearly had a white cane and was holding on to the woman. He was obviously blind and yet people continued to show their impatience at not being able to move up the escalator. There is no way that you can be such a hurry that you can't wait 30 seconds for a blind man to make it to the top of the escalator.
The second category includes the "Oh, this looks interesting" category. Usually these people are lost, tourists, lost in conversation, or just stupid. I will forgive these people on weekends or in less busy areas of the city. But if it is Monday-Friday, between the hours of 6:00-20:00, then please don't clog the sidewalk. They get into a daze and stare into shop windows or realize they're going the wrong way and come to a quick halt with their luggage in tow. I have often come to similar realizations, but I try my best to move to the side before stopping and then turning around. Don't read your map at the top of the stairs of the Notting Hill Gate station. Just don't. There is so much sidewalk to the side that you can easily move over. If you need help, ask me. I will be happy to help you figure out where Portabello Road is. But please, don't stop your whole family in the center of pedestrian traffic. If you are on vacation you have earned your right to walk slowly, but remember that most of us still need to go to work or class. Please walk slowly on the side of the sidewalk. Or if you must take up the whole sidewalk, please be willing to move to the side when people come from the opposite direction. I don't know how many times I have almost crashed into people because they have refused to make even a small amount of space for other people. I have a heavy backpack filled with library books, don't think that I'm afraid to swing it into you if I need to.
2) The Royal Mail Service
In the US, people tend to put return addresses on the top left corner of the envelope. It's a pretty sensible thing to do, unless you're sending hate mail. In the UK, if someone does put a return address on the envelope, they usually put it on the back of the envelope. However, it has typically been acceptable to put the return address on the top left side of the envelope, it's just not extremely common. Apparently, this has become a recent problem. Mail carriers get confused and wind up returning mail to the sender instead of to the intended recipient. Last week I sent my absentee ballot. I went to the post office and purchased the correct amount of postage. As it is an official envelope, I am not able to change any of the info on it. The send to address is a bit confusing, but still says Boston, MA on it. My return address was printed on the top left corner. The postage clearly shows that the envelope should be leaving the UK (why would I attach British stamps to an envelope from the US?). However, a few days later, the envelope was returned with no note. The only reason I could think of was that the postman was confused and had seen the return address and sent it there. So I wrote on the envelope, indicating which was the return address and which was the mail to address. Several days passed and the envelope wasn't returned so I was pretty happy. But when I'd almost forgotten about the incident, it came back with a note: "Could not be delivered." No explanation was provided. It had correct postage and an address. So now it's been Fed Exed. Thanks Royal Mail. That's just stupid. Why not just send it to Boston and let them figure it out from there? If the envelope's so confusing, let me blame them for it being lost than you. But that won't happen now that they returned it to me twice.
1) Nicholas Cage
He's stupid, ugly, and balding. Oh, and he can't act either. Stop showing your stupid face on buses because I don't want to see it. It makes me angry every time I see an ad with him on it. All of your movies suck, except for Raising Arizona. Adaptation was one of the worst movies ever because he played twins, meaning that I had to see him twice as much. Yuck. Why are you famous?
