Days Without Alcohol - 88.
I must be getting old, or maybe I am spending too much time hanging around with my colleague Andrew Collings, but I am becoming more and more annoyed by bad etiquette in daily life. I know there are certainly times when I am guilty of being socially irresponsible or selfish, but increasingly believe the world would be a much less shitty place if we all just made the smallest of efforts to tidy up after ourselves and consider other people.
Last week when stopping for petrol on the way back from Wales the passenger in the car parked in front of me opened his door and dropped out his paper coffee cup right on to the forecourt. He was less than to metres from a bin and the car wasn't even pulling away as the driver was inside paying. Such flagrant disrespect for other people and general flippant laziness made me tut like an old lady. I was not so foolish as to openly chastise them, for fear of being knifed in the eye, but maybe I should have said something. Instead I waited until they had gone and then picked up and binned the cups myself. They were such idiots that they'd actually bought Macdonald's coffee when there was a Caffe Ritazza. Not only rude, but lacking in taste and judgement too.
I know that I have thrown rubbish from my car on many occasions, for example, if I was moving along and had a piece of chewing gum that was finished I used to always throw that out of the window, as if the fact that I was speeding along would somehow make the dropping of this particularly nasty piece of litter magically harmless. I also used to throw chewing gum down between the tracks at the tube station, because once it's in there it's gone, right. Then I saw a programme about the people whose job it is to clean the tube tunnels and tracks and I thought, "That job is horrible enough as it is, why make it any more unpleasant?" and made an effort to stop (though occasionally manage to conviently forget). I also now nearly always bin my car gum in a conveniently located plastic bag. I am definitely in my 40s right?
Gym etiquette has really been annoying me this week though. I am amazed by how few people clean up after themselves. More and more people seem to be leaving their dirty towels on the benches by the lockers than ever before. It is such a simple matter to pick up your wet towel and place it in the bins provided, but that is too much trouble for some people. Presumably they feel they are paying to be a member of the gym and there are people paid to clean the changing rooms, so why shouldn't they just leave it for them? But why make this shitty job worse and what about the other gym users whose space is being filled with dirty, stinky towels? Again I chose to clear the towels up this week, rather than just leaving them for someone else. I am turning into my dad.
The thing that annoyed me today though, was that old bugbear of getting back to my locker after my work out to find that the bloke at the next door locker was also in the process of changing. It happens a lot and it's obviously polite to both make as much effort as possible to allow your neighbour to both open and access his locker, probably by moving a bit further along the bench and making sure your stuff is not in the way. This guy was sat bang in front of his own locker, with stuff strewn around all over. I excused myself to open my locker and because I was nearly standing on his shoes he moved those, but he was still sitting in a place that made it very hard for me to fully open my locker door and he sat there steadfastly, with the attitude of "Well I was here first? Why should I move?" Even though I was clearly inconvenienced, he stood, or rather sat his ground. Just staring blankly ahead as if this would convince me that I hadn't seen him, like I do when I am driving and don't want to let someone in. It would have taken the slightest effort for him to move to his left a little and actually made things better for both of us, but it was clearly some matter of pride for him to be sitting in his towel in front of his own locker, so I didn't complain and made the best of a bad situation. Had he been pleasant about it then it would have made me feel better, possibly have made him feel good too and have introduced a tiny spark of light into a world that is much too dark as it is.
Life is hard enough without needlessly making it worse, yet we are all sinners as much as we are sinned against. But I am going to try to make an effort to do better and if all of you lot did too, then imagine how very slightly less bad the world would be.
Apologies also to anyone who came to see me in Collier's Wood tonight. After two months of my own shows I was very rusty in returning to the 20 minute format and did a scarcely adequate job. I arrogantly assumed that my success in my one man shows would automatically transfer to the comedy club format and my hubris was rewarded with a somewhat disappointing performance where I made some elementary mistakes. Come and see me again. I will be better next time. I have learned from my hubris.
Oh and the latest Collings and Herrin podcast is now up at
the usual place. Subscribe at iTunes and keep us above Nuts - we hit 21 in the main charts today! That's a career best, though we've slipped a little since.
