1. That whole blackboard thing

2. Ferry door

3. Text beep

4. Air-raid siren

5. Hanson

25<>21

025 This Morning, Without Richard And Judy Why? What's the point? I'm sure Lulu and thingy are lovely, though.

024 Drizzle If you are, say, doing the washing, you don't want to have to keep running in and out collecting it because of some entirely inconsequential but - and here's the link, link fans - entirely irritating rain, do you?

023 Body Fascists "Look at us, we are superior with our well-toned and suspiciously oiled bodies! We will strut around and make you feel rubbish and sloppy and spineless. What sport are you pretending to play? It is bowling. Oh."

022 Mobile phone bleep Because my nervous system now appears to be almost completely hardwired into that of my mobile phone, it bleeping with an incoming message causes me to jump several feet and run to it like a baby. Tsk.

021 English Patriotism "Hurrah! We have won a single game of football, which is a stupid game anyway but let's not get into that, and so we compare it to winning some massive intercontinental war in which millions were lost!" Yesss.

020 "World Exclusive!" What, pray, makes a "World Exclusive!" different from an "Exclusive!!"? Ex-act-ly.

019 Unreachable Itching Or any sort of itch that refuses to go away, despite you removing several layers of skin.

018 Microsoft Zealots We repeat: Microsoft, if not Spawn of Satan, are certainly very evil, and certainly in no way should be regarded as part of a beaming Edenistic future. Cretins.

017 "No Space For New Messages" Because I never have.

016 This colour scheme Don't think I actually *like* these colours together. I chose them for a reason, oh yes

15<>11

015 Shop calendars How, possibly, can the year look like this: New Year Sales (4 weeks); Sale Season (4 weeks); Spring Sales (2 weeks); Summer clothing (for a summer that actually lasts three days - 2 months); Back To School (1 week); Halloween (a nanosecond); Christmas (3 billion years). Hmm. Capitalism at work, kids.

014 Burger "Joints" Look everyone, a juxtaposition. Burgers are not made of food, they are made of recyclable human waste. They taste as much. Why do people continue to go into Burger King? Because they are Fools.

013 Shops on Ferries I do not, repeat, do not, want to spend five-and-a-half hours wandering around a "boutique" which sells products designed /only/ for women. I want magazines to look at and not actually ever buy, CDs to buy loads of, and other things like that. Tsk. Equal opportunities, muttonheads.

012 Nostalgia Why do things always seem better than they actually were? I bet in 1770, people were standing around going, "Hmm, that plague of '65, that was fantastic, weren't it? Don't get ones like that any more. Pass me another turnip, Jed."

011 Places without public toilets Yes, I know it's a random one, but why are there not toilets in every single public place you may visit? I mean, it's not as if you can avoid the odd bowel movement when you're in the library. It's happened for billions of years. (Well, maybe not in the library). It's so inconvenient! Rant mode off.

1. "Everything'll turn out for the best."

2. "I had one like that. But it was much better."

3. "Mmm, that happened to me in Singapore!"

4. "I remember, it was back in '73, or was it '74..."

5. "Kids today".

6. "Page not available".

7. "Please hold."

.010

Pop-up Ads

A fairly beardy technical one this, but everyone knows what I mean. Why, when you're visiting the forum, does some annoying capitalist insist that you may just be interested in buying their pointless little camera? No-one cares, Mr Capitalist. So just leave us alone.

.009

Spelling Errors

Yes, I know it's more anal than anyone has the right to be, but I really can't stand spelling mistakes. I even made Vice-Roy Ian go back and change some on this site just the other week. Grr. I hate myself for it, though.

.008

Irritating Reasons To Miss Stuff

Say, just for instance, that a friend invites you down to London for a fantastic weekend of Stuff. Hurrah, you'd say. But, oh no! You suddenly realise that you are already booked in to see you Aunt Mabel in Colchester that Sunday. This may have happened to me.

.007

People Posting "Hilarious" Captions Under Hideous Photos Of You, And Then Thinking That They Are Some Kind Of Comic Genius

'Nuff said, really.

.006

British Sitcoms

Which are, at the moment, all universally terrible and should really be put out of their misery right this instant. I mean, if you can't even get a studio audience who's gonna laugh at your jokes, what hope have you got with the licence-paying British public?

.005

Xenophobia

As in "These bloody foreigners, coming over here and taking all our jobs and council housing, with their massive families and funny slanty eyes". How stupid can you get? There's no such thing as a foreigner, at least not in these dumb sort of physical terms. Aargh.

004

Adverts in sports TV

"...And Schumacher is coming around the final bend and, what's this?, it's Grobbelar on his tail, and this is tremendously exciting, and Tim Henman's going for the point that may win him the tournament, and buy Bird's Custard."

.003

Lost Talent

You know? Magazines and websites and places where people are able to use a talent and express creativity are closing down, literally as we speak, because they're being squeezed out by evil capitalist market forces. I hate that.

002

Trying To Remember Something Lost In Your Neural Network

(in other words: being forgetful)

How many times have you struggled to remember something someone said, or whether it was last Tuesday or Thursday you had fish for dinner, or what the URL is of Jonathan Nash's new website? Okay, probably very few, but I have. Lots. My neural pathways are about as confused and wiggly as you get, and the worrying fact is that my physical surroundings are increasingly mirroring this. Viz: piles of paper everywhere, poetry anthologies I'd entirely forgotten I'd written, and Reading tickets somewhere on my desk. But it's also a very good thing: I like being bumbling and creative, and scientists with their dead sharkeyes and hedgerow beards are venemously scary.

and the winner is...

001

Sunday Supplement Lists With Smart-Arse, Self-Referential, Ironic Endings.

Like this one.

Thankyou for reading: it's been emotional. Well, actually, it hasn't, but at least it gave me something to do when I'd got back from hols. Apart from sitting in the garden supping Pimm's, natch.

Do you have some annoyances you want to get off your chest, figuratively speaking? If so, mail them to me! Lovely people.