What really gets your dander up? What engages you, makes your blood boil? What would you get off your backside and do something about? This final point has always been the issue for me. Plenty has angered me over the years. That sounds like Chief Sitting Bull. Me plenty angry. I take it he must have been a right lazy bugger. Old Sitting Bull. Much more lethargic than Running Bull, Leapfrogging Bull but more mature than Mooning Bull. I would have been Horizontal Bull. I used to be Vertical a lot more as a youth. Vertical Bullock. Sounds like a disease. I used to play sport. I used to stand up in pubs, football matches, and in discotheques, where I would regularly swing my pants on the dance floor. Increasingly now, life is horizontal. Previously I used to participate in life. Now I observe. And I do that best with my feet up. I'll sit if I have to, but my preferred state is settee heaven. Thankfully, Middlesbrough's attendance means there's always room for a lie down. There's an idea for a pub here, appealing to the mature audience by doing away with seats and having only settees and hammocks. Plenty annoys me, but doing something about it has been my downfall. Apathy has won the day, in the shape of said comfortable settee, digital television, and, increasingly, a Chocolate HobNob. But it wasn't always so. In days gone by I thought that intelligent debate was the way through many of life's social problems. Then I watched Gandhi getting clobbered with sticks. So, then it seemed to me that the ideal toolbox in a heated debate was intellect, backed by a big stick. However, opposing this theory I give you America. So is the answer just a big stick? Now, I think many of life's problems could be solved with a Chocolate HobNob - and for the real thorny issues - racism and religious bigotry - the magnificent HobNob Chocolate Flapjack. I feel able to sit down with the most appalling individuals on earth, if we could start with a cup of tea and a HobNob selection. Cement Woman and I are on HobNobs between Monday and Friday, and so far, so good. Weekends sees Middlesbrough Football Club and alcohol acting as the necessary buffer. The appallingly long summer will see barbecues step up to the plate, unless I decide to have a torrid affair. With Stella perhaps. Reassuringly expensive. I'm happy with cheap myself. I believe that Relate are looking very seriously at the whole HobNob situation. I believe I could even be civil to Wayne Rooney in the post HobNob Chocolate Flapjack glow. I'd imagine he'd be quite comfortable stuffing his face as well. I'd hardly hear him swearing. I'd have to watch the spitting mind. If there was ever a HobNob shortage I could take to the streets, angrily waving placards. "MAKE HOBNOBS - NOT WAR". Leading the chanting, "WHAT DO WE WANT?
HOBNOBS!
WHEN DO WE WANT THEM?
BY TEATIME". Middle England in a HobNob frenzy. As you age the things that anger you, and give you pleasure change. As a hairy, slim youth, I used to watch Party Conferences. I nearly joined in things. That could be my epitaph, on the gravestone, "Robert Cuff, He Nearly Joined In. This gravestone is donated by all at McVitie's". Issues really used to stir my blood. South Africa. Nuclear Disarmament. The Iron Curtain. Free Willy. Apartheid. Maradona's Hand of God. Maradona's Like A Virgin. I did actually join Amnesty - the literature they sent to me was so bloody depressing I thought it best to spend time in the pub instead. My interest used to be worldwide. Now it's primarily about wheelie bins and people parking outside my house. As you age your agenda becomes narrower, more self centred and petty. If you don't believe me watch the House Of Lords. We have two wheelie bins. One black, for household rubbish. One green, for garden stuff. The black one is picked up one week, the green one the next. Which means we have household rubbish for up to a fortnight, rotting in our yards. So, if you're common, and eat fish and chips (my God, the very thought, do some people still do this sort of thing?) it could be hanging around for nearly two weeks. Imagine what it's going to be like with global warming? (Something for the kids there). So, I'm taking stuff to the council tip every week, essentially doing the council's job. I'm genuinely outraged, but in a quiet, dreadfully weak manner. I'd have voted for any party that had addressed these issues, and for instance allowed you to shoot the tyres of anyone parked outside your house. So, what really angers you, what's your poisonous agenda, and most critically, your favourite biscuit/cake? ********** Having the day from hell? Today is Friday the 13th. An unlucky day. A day when single men can get a flavour of what marriage may be like. A day of potential heartache and pain. A day when bad things can, and I sincerely hope, will happen. Are you superstitious? I hope so. Because today I want you to be afraid - very afraid. Beware black cats. Beware ladders. Beware black cats falling from ladders, and landing on your privates. Clawing at them. Beware any blokes called Freddie. I would also recommend you beware blokes called Ken, Brian or Colin - I think the reasons would be obvious. I see things landing on you, so keep looking up. That way, however, you won't see the bicycle that will knock you over. So, look up and down all the time. And don't forget left and right. Don't visit any remote houses today, that way lies madness. Check under your bed tonight. If you see someone under there, it will be either Ken, Brian or Colin I reckon. Be careful around electrical appliances. That way lies Accident and Emergency. Don't go into a field with a bull in it. These people end up as editorial stories, headed: "The Luckiest Man In The World - I was gored, but survived". Lucky Jim is pictured, bandaged from head to foot, giving painful thumbs up to the smirking photographer, with his nether regions in a jar by the bed. Apart from that, enjoy yourselves. Any desperately amusing Worst Day Of My Life stories? | 
