Don't people nowadays know about this whole dipping your headlights thing when people are approaching or when following someone close behind? Is this one of those dying arts, like basket-weaving, thatching, and bothering to indicate when turning left, so people don't sit there needlessly giving way to you?

Agh. I really, really mustn't listen to radio phone-ins. I don't normally do it, but this time the radio happened to be on in the car at the wrong moment. I just get so cross and so frustrated and so depressed at the sheer number of people who know they are right. They spout their bigoted opinions and their narrow little world views, and they say it with absolute unshakeable conviction that they are right, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is morally wrong or worthless or stupid or rotten to the core. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall and cry. Occasionaly I might even more or less agree with what they're saying, but they state it as such categorical fact that I want to pin them to the wall and devil's advocate them to death.

A birthday card was just passed around at work for us all to sign. It included a rogue apostrophe! This was in the proper printed greeting! You kind of expect these thing's in handwritten sign's in greengrocers shop's or special's board's in pub's, and we all make slip's of the pen every now and then, but a proper published greeting's card? Outrage! Outrage! What i's the world coming to? et'c e'tc.

It's not even a funny mistake. Rogue inverted commas can be. ("Fresh" chicken soup). Confusion over similar words can be. ("The meat is complimented by the sauce." "Beware the deadly rouge gorilla fighters" etc.) This was just annoying. I am sorry to say that I had to discreetly cross it out before I could sign the card.

This is a predictable rant, because I know I've ranted about similar things before. In fact, I can probably leave half the words blank, and you'd all be able to fill them in. (Now, there's an idea for an LJ post…)

( On reading for pleasure etc. )

I watched the second episode of Sense and Sensibility last night, which I'd recorded the previous night. We reached the end of the episode, got a fraction of a second of blackness… and – bang! – straight into a preview of next week's episode. I hate how they do this. I'm quite fond of trailers in their place, but there are definitely times when I don't want to see any spoilers for the next episode. At any rate, I like to have the choice of whether to watch it or not, rather than to have it come crashing in before I've realised that the episode has actually finished, totally ruining the effect of the ending.

Announcers are even worse. A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of a TV series in which heartbreaking things happened. The end of the episode was quiet and deeply emotional, and I was in tears. The screen just began to fade to black… and in came the loud and cheery voice of the announcer telling me about some stupid laugh-a-minute programme coming up later in the week. (Yes, I know I can just reach for the "mute" button the moment the programme is finished, but it's hard to get quite so emotionally caught up in a programme if you're poised over the remote control, ready to mute at the slightest hint of an imminent ending.)

Viewers often complain about things like this, but the BBC (and others) never take the blind bit of notice. Of course, they want to attract and keep viewers, and presumably they've done research that finds that more people are attracted by pushy trailers and announcements that are deterred by it. It's just a shame. I wonder if things like this genuinely do attract more people than they deter. Perhaps they assume that people like me will get cross, but will still watch. However, I've pretty much given up watching television documentaries because I've got so annoyed by their irritating habits, such as concentrating on the presenter and not the content, and telling us everything three times – one in a "coming up" preview, once properly, and once in a "previously in" recap.

I expect people will accuse me of being bah humbuggy, but, hey…

Say something like, "It's three weeks until Christmas" (when it is three weeks until Christmas, of course), and the standard response from most adults is a pained, "Oh, please, don't." Library book issues plummet in December, as people say with heart-felt regret, "Oh, I wish I had time to read, but I've got so much still to do." (By the way, it always bothers me when I hear parents say to their children at the end of November, "You can't borrow any more books today, because Father Christmas might bring you some." Subtext: "I'm too busy rushing around like a headless chicken buying presents, and will forget to return them, so you're not allowed books for the next month.")

Yesterday, I heard someone complain about how they'd been out for six nights out of the past seven at various Christmas parties, "and you have to go, haven't you, because it's rude not to, but it's just too much." Today, I heard someone explain at great length about how they "had" to spend Christmas with various relatives they had nothing in common with, and how much they were "dreading" it. Someone else said how their mum used to spend all of Christmas day cooking, and then would go to bed after the washing-up was done, exhausted.

The shops are full of stressed people, their tempers close to breaking, struggling desperately to buy something for distant relatives they don't know – and what chance is there that they will get something the relative actually wants? Parents are scouring the shops for whatever the media tells them is this year's "must have present", and fear their child's Christmas will be ruined by not having it.

While a lot of individuals have very happy Christmases, an awful lot of people seem to be made very stressed by something that's supposed to be joyous. I wonder what's gone wrong.

"Recycle!" they tell us. They talk about going to a fortnightly rubbish collection, to force people to recycle, rather than throw away. They talk about charging per rubbish bag. School children (at least here) have been sent out with pledge books, to collect "I will recycle" pledges from any adult they can find. Okay. So why, Mr Council, do you make it so hard for us to do it?

We have a fortnightly kerbside recycling collection. Actually remembering which is our "on" week and which is our "off" week usually defeats us. Even when we remember, our problems are far from over. The black box can be used for glass and paper, but not just any old paper, oh no. Newspapers are fine. Stapled magazines are fine. Glued magazines? No way. Junk mail? Old envelopes? Amazon packaging? Cereal packets? Pizza boxes? All the multifarious bits of cardboard that supermarket food gets wrapped in? No to all of these. However, the local recycling place (only open at weekends, and not all day) takes all paper and card and plastic all mixed together. Since this is, one would expect, the ultimate destination of the kerbside collection, why does the kerbside one have more restrictions? We tend to chuck all cardboard and paper into the black box, which means that separating it out on black box day becomes too much of a nuisance, and we drive off to the recycling place at the weekend - thus making an extra, ought-not-to-be-unnecessary journey - where at least they'll take it all, and not get sniffy about a stray envelope.

We can also put out garden rubbish for a fortnightly collection, but only in special bags that we have to buy at £1 each, and don't get back. Where do all these bags go? Cluttering up landfill? In contrast, if we drive to the recycling place (only open at weekends, and not all day), we can tip the garden waste in the skip, and keep the bag. We can also collect food waste, but these, too, need to be in plastic bags. Someone at work says she doesn't have a single plastic bag in the house, since she loads her shopping direct from trolley into crates in the car, yet she's been told that she's got to go out and buy (or otherwise obtain) plastic bags if she wants use this service.

And while we're on the subject of bags... It's amazing how much effort it requires to stop people giving up bags in shops, even when you've come armed with your own re-useable ones... But this suddenly sounds familiar, so I think I must have ranted about this before. I'll be quiet now.

1. When you drop a laptop on top of a glass of home-made plum wine, it is not good for the carpet, the glass, your feet, or the laptop. Fortunately, the stain comes out, feet prove freakishly good at avoiding deadly injury, and the glass was only cheap, but the laptop appears to have died completely as a result of its late-night ordeal. Grr!!!!

2. It is nice having a calendar that tells you all about the customs associated with each day. The trouble comes when said calendar is so nice that you decide you don't want to write anything on it, so you live your life depending on your frail human memory to tell you when you've got to do something. My childhood home town has a community radio programme that broadcasts for a few days this week. I knew all about it, but still managed to completely forget to listen to my Mum's interview, and to the play about folk songs being collected in the local workhouse in 1908. I really really wanted to hear the play, since I did quite a bit of research about those workhouse singers a few years ago. Grr!!!!

3. Sainsbury's seems to be very proud of the fact that you can now pretty much do your entire week's food shop in the petrol station. It is not something to boast about! I was quarter of an hour waiting for petrol yesterday, and the queue for the petrol station was grinding traffic to a halt in the whole area. So many people were dilly-dallying around the shop, very slowly choosing food, while their car sat there empty, blocking a pump. Even people who only wanted to pay for petrol had to queue patiently behind all those people with their overflowing baskets. Grr!!!!

4. While on the subject of Sainsbury's, and not really a grr, I think I need to learn that just because you can pick up a free pasta bowl with the five stickered items you were going to buy anyway, you don't have to. I can foresee a future in which large white pasta bowls feature very highly, gradually taking over the kitchen, and soon, indeed, the world.

5. Having two late alcohol-fuelled nights in a row plays havoc with one's ability to write. It also makes you feel that playing Guitar Hero on "expert" is a good idea. It does, however, somewhat take away your ability to manage a single coherent note. This makes you frustrated. This makes you do silly things like... er... dropping a laptop on a glass of home-made plum wine...

What is it with me this weekend? Why does every bird and animal on Vectis feel the need to leap out in front of me? On a trip to West Wight yesterday, I almost squashed a pheasant, a partridge, a baby pigeon, two rabbits, a stoatorweasel, and a red squirrel. This is far too many to be mere coincidence. I think a description of my car has been given out on the Fur and Feather Radio Station. Clearly they know that I'm the sort of person who will do anything I can to avoid hitting said beasties, rather than being one of those drivers who goes, "Yay! Road kill!" and gleefully squashes them. Either I have been chosen for a giant introductory game of chicken ("Baby's First Insane Brush With Death. Ah, how cute! Let's put it in the family album"), or unhappy animals are using me for their suicide attempts/cries for help, knowing that I almost certainly won't really hit them.

( The sound of crunching in the evening )