When you do a google images search for Stella McCartney and Team GB you find a dozen or so images which exclude our para-olympians for every one that includes them.
Stella McCartney TeamGB
This upsets me for many reasons, the least of which is that I am neither fit nor sporty and I find athletes unnerving and rather frightening, but I find disabled athletes inspiring.
Posted in eclectic shocks
I like to observe how people use language, and tend to neither prescribe nor proscribe. However, some new usage does manage to scrape on my nerves. The first two dislikes are business-speak, the third is general. All three seem to be increasing.
I hadn’t noticed them prior to this, but they are increasingly used in multiple situations by others but not by myself.
Posted in language
A strong sense of entitlement is unplasant; it makes people unpleasant, and it makes them do unpleasant things.
The original version of this post was an extended complaint about a woman I have had a lot to do with recently who has a strong sense of entitlement and appears to be a seething mass of frustration and bitterness. However, since then I have been reading Watching the English by Kate Fox, and I suspect that her tell-it-like-it-is American-ness has come up against my oh-well-mustn’t-grumble English-ness and that I may be being unfair. So maybe I am being unduly harsh on Mrs Entitlement. But maybe not.
Despite the patronising nastiness of the British middle class attitude which came up with phrases such as “poor but happy” and “poor but honest”, I think a sense of entitlement can really screw you over. It seems that complaining all the time creates a self-feeding loop of discontent: according to Richard Wiseman in :59 Seconds counting your blessings really does make you feel better, and if you write them down the difference is still discernible weeks or months later.
Reading Wiseman’s book confirmed something I’ve thought for a while. Some years ago I decided I would rather be happy than frustrated and, when I could just about pay my way but no more, I would give myself a mental bitch-slap and remind myself that the world is full of people who dream of being able to pay their bills. Maslow tells us that we will always have something to complain about, if we are of a complaining frame of mind.
Mrs Entitlement is, as I said, a seething mass of anger and frustration even though she appears to be living the dream: she has an interesting and reasonably well-paid job, her husband’s a substantial earner, they live in the country, their children are in private schools, they are all healthy. However she winds herself up with complaints about her au pair, about car accidents delaying her journey into work in the morning, about her mother-in-law, her colleagues, airlines, service in restaurants, the cat. Just about anything really. She is a hissing ball of barely suppressed rage.
I think if I really wanted to curse someone, I would give them a sense of entitlement.
In the meantime Nina shows us how to count our blessings better than anyone I know:
Posted in diary
It’s been almost three years since I blogged here.
I stopped because I wanted to blog in my own name and I didn’t have enough mojo to maintain two blogs.
I am starting again because I want to post pseudonymously again. Also, I liked Aphra and I miss her.
My life has changed quite a bit during these three years; I live elsewhere and I work for someone else for a start.
Unfortunately I have also become a lot fussier about what I write, which means it takes me more time to produce less.
But my interests are still eclectic. And I still fizz with anger, rage and shock. And, guess what, the NHS is in crisis again, and the USA is madder and scarier than ever. Oh, and I still notice the banal and the ridiculous and pick it up and say “look… shiny….”.
