*WARNING* Rant Time Again!

During my two years driving experience on the busy roads of Aberdeenshire and beyond I have been constantly annoyed, infuriated and left screaming at the driver in front!

This cannot be good for my blood pressure! So keep off the roads you lot that I will describe and complain about in the rest of this rant.

I should really be writing this to a calm soothing track but instead I have opted for “Road Rage” by “Catatonia” a brilliant song and quite frankly well tied in!

We’ve all been there…knackered in the morning and having to get up to go to work or uni (for you students out there) so we all have a couple of minutes extra lying in bed to contemplate getting up. Who would have known that this ‘couple of minutes’ or more accurately 5 minutes would contribute to stress or lateness?! But this is exactly what happens. Because you still have your morning routine to go through (we all know what our own is and no-one can beat it! Mine is shower, make breakfast, feed dog, make lunch for work, eat breakfast (I like it to soak into the milk so its probably left for a good 10 minutes!), watch 10 minutes of TV then I'm ready to go). Thus now being a wee bit behind schedule (when you convinced yourself that you wouldn’t be the night before) you set off in the car and hope to have a smooth drive without encountering any set backs. This is never going to happen!!
Because I live on a street adjoining the main road I constantly have to wait for my gap in traffic to push out onto the road. (Seriously I just sit in the middle of the road ‘til people have to let you go out! It works!) Once you have done this you can be assured that you will get stuck behind a slow car/lorry delivery who chooses to stop in the lane and ‘park’ there, or alternatively a bus (see previous rant about bus drivers). None of which is very helpful when you’re already late. Neither are those new traffic lights they have installed at the corner of the Keithall turn-off. They are a royal pain in the arse.
Eventually you make it onto the dual carriageway and the real speed begins (naturally I always stick to the speed limit and I would in no way condone speeding having only done it once myself and feeling immediately full of regret for being a law breaker!) You can overtake car by car who choose to go 60mph and sit behind other traffic (why?), which makes you feel as if you are making real progress in your battle to be on time. Sadly it is only a matter of time before you encounter what I like to call a SAUD (Slow And Useless Driver) who intends to hog the right hand lane to overtake a car going exactly the same speed and has no plans to speed up in order to facilitate the overtake. The whole point is that you speed up move back into the left lane then return to whatever speed you are comfortable with. Also the right hand lane IS NOT for sitting in about 3 miles before you have to make a right turn at the next roundabout. I shall repeat that…IT IS NOT FOR THAT!!! That is a big sore point for me. Anyway these SAUD’s usually make me scream and shout at the windscreen of my car until they actually move or I feel slightly better. It’s a therapy technique I'm using called, “Releasing the Rage”! It partially works.
They are probably quite unaware of the stress they are putting me under. Perhaps this is only a problem for younger people, as we probably tend to want to go faster than people older than ourselves, just because we can! And part of being young is to do everything as quickly as possible, so eventually we will mature (possibly!) and therefore slow down when driving.

One of the most annoying things EVER in the history of the world (got carried away!) is when someone moves out in front of you to overtake the person they are stuck behind right in front of you and thus making you slow down and slam on the breaks. So I have thought of a device in a car, which would prohibit people from doing this.

I really must buy a punch bag...grrrrrrhh!

"Please Give Blood"

"She has 1 day to live...only you can help"

"Save a life...it could be your own"

I’m sure we have all seen the adverts asking us to give blood around the town, in the paper, on the TV and even leaflets through the door. GLADLY. Why wouldn’t I want to help them out and give them some blood to save peoples lives? Wouldn’t anyone?

Let me paint the picture for you…
I had just returned from seeing my grandparents in England and had flown into Aberdeen airport and returned home at about 7.45pm, great I thought I can go give blood because it doesn’t finish until half 8. So I walked up to the Academy building and took a number in the queue. All the beds were full and three rows of seats were taken up. Seeing this I thought right bugger this for a laugh, I'm not sitting here when I’m hungry and haven’t been home properly yet so I informed the woman on reception that I was going to go home and get some dinner then come back and give blood. “I’ll be closing the doors at 8.30pm” she said. “No worries, ill be back before then”. To be fair I think she thought I would never be back with the length of the ques but I did indeed come back and this is what enraged me! Grrrhhhhhhh.

Up I walk back to the Academy of which I live roughly 2 minutes away from (pretty handy when I was there at school) and I cannot get into the building, hmm that’s odd I thought but then the same woman as mentioned previously comes waddling towards the door (she has a weight problem…her problem might stem from overeating…no animosity to be found here!!). “I told you I was closing the doors at half past eight” she says with a smile on her face (I’m not sure if mentioning the fact that she had a smile on her face is important but it annoyed me), “yes but its only just turned half past” I replied. Two donators walk out the door as I say this and look at me with slight disgust as I exclaim “f*ck sake what’s the point of asking for my blood and exclaiming you need more if you now don’t want it”. I then walk away in disgust (and before I punch the woman) and continue to curse that stupid woman who refused to let me in even though there were still people waiting to be seen to inside.
I mean what is the point in advertising and sending out letters such as the one below…

"Dear Euan,

We urgently require your blood to keep our supplies topped up.
Please aim to give 3 donations this year.

We greatly appreciate your donations and wish to thank you for giving in the past.

BTS"

Oh fair play, ill easy give you a pint of my precious blood because I don’t need all of it so you can have a pint. Blood makes the world go round don’t you know! Oh perhaps you want to actually let me in the door and not refuse me because I have a busy life and was bloody hungry, oh I’m sorry, what’s that…oh you wanted to go home. Tough sh*t. If I’m at work and a plane is due to come in at an inconvenient time and means I have to stay 10 minutes later than I was hoping to, I hardly think my boss would be impressed if I told it to think about landing somewhere else so I could go home. Hmmmm yeh probably not.

Anyway to conclude…don’t be a fat stupid woman and refuse peoples blood because it just annoys them and they are likely not to come back again.
However, everyone gets their just rewards…

Last week I attended an AA meeting, and to my horror, each person present
stood up and openly admitted to being an alcoholic. I'm not having these
boastful drunkards repairing my car. I can only hope the RAC have more
responsible employees.
Hugie Dixon, West Drayton

I am married to a Taiwanese lady, and people often ask me if she was a
mail-order bride. I find this very insensitive. The Royal Mail lose around
2 million letters and parcels each year, and to suggest that I would trust
the delivery of my wife to them is insulting in the extreme. She was sent
by DHL next day delivery.
L Palmer, London

With reference to Mr Palmer's previous letter. I am also married to a
Taiwanese lady, but nobody ever asks me if she is a mail order bride. But
perhaps that's because I am also Taiwanese. And we live in Taiwan.
Lo Chi Chang, Taipei

The record companies would have us believe that the money made by CD
pirates goes to fund the drug industry. But the money rock stars make from
legal record sales ends up in exactly the same place. When they stop
breaking the law, so will I.
P Boddington, Ringway

Peter Andre might look smug in all his wedding pictures, but I'd just like
to remind him that, as a Playboy reader, I have seen his wife naked. He
hasn't seen my wife's, so who's had the last laugh?
P, Leeds


Hats off to the American police. They arrive at Michael Jackson's
Neverland ranch to arrest him a mere six months after he admits climbing
into bed with young boys on worldwide TV. Perhaps they should get some
faster cars.
T Barnham, London

How come rap artist Dr. Dre can use the 'N' word on his multi-million
selling albums and win a MOBO award, yet when I used it at my son's
football match I was asked to leave the park? Once again, it's one law for
the rich and another for the poor.
Reg Ashcroft, Bradford


Hats off to the witty burglars who stole my entire CD collection with the
exception of "There is Nothing Left to Lose" by the Foo Fighters. I hope
that when sentencing, the judge takes into account their splendid sense of
humour.
Chris Scaife, Jesmond

I never worry about the destination when I'm going on holiday. My dad is
Iranian and my mum is Irish, so I spend most of the time in customs.
Stan

What's all this nonsense about that 66-year-old Romanian woman being the
world's oldest mum? My mum's 77. Beat that.
Thomas J

I'd like to congratulate the marketing geniuses responsible for naming the
new A1 motor racing championship. Now they have craftily secured pole
position in the Yellow Pages, surely there will be no stopping them.
Bernie Eccles-tone will have to think again.
Aardvark Mansell