I do find as I’m getting older that I really am getting quite annoyed at certain things, and some people are really getting on my nerves and to be honest I haven’t many left.

Take the other day for example. We went into a café. I shan’t mention which one for a coffee and a slice of toast. Of course, no one seems to just do one slice of toast anymore, you must have two, even if you don’t want them, which makes me silently groan.

Now I don’t think that I am being unreasonable to expect my two, not one, slices of toast to have remotely looked inside the toaster, but when the toast came it appeared that the bread must have been frightened to death and refused to enter the toaster. “Could you please put the bread in the toaster” I asked the young woman. “I did” she replied I was getting quite frazzled. “Well, would it be too much to ask that you could possibly put this in the toaster again?” I know that electricity prices are high but in order to make the bread turn brown you have to turn the bloody thing on I thought. She didn’t look too pleased as she toddled off.

Then there’s cappuccinos. Oh, I love a cappuccino, but as I don’t live in Italy, I do expect chocolate sprinkles on top, especially when you see the price of them. Now you could call me a philistine but, I live in Barnsley and in my opinion if it doesn’t have a generous amount of sprinkles on top then it’s nothing more than a frothy coffee, end of!

Then there’s the issue with payment. So, after I’ve waited to order, silently groaning, and pointing out that if I wanted a frothy coffee, I would ask for one, only to be informed that “it’s card only. We don’t take cash.” The woman behind the counter told me. “Oh dear.” I said, “You have a problem then don’t you, because I only ever pay with cash.” Surprising how people can change their minds when confronted with a grumpy sixty something woman who refuses to use card payment.

Oh, and there’s another thing that gets right up my nose. No prices on items in shops. I then have to look all over for a shop assistant, preferably one who looks older than ten and who isn’t just going on their break, only to have them gaze at the item and shrug their shoulders at me. What does that mean? Does it mean that they have no idea and have no inkling to go and check or is it that they have a creak in their neck and they’re exercising their shoulders?

Then I have to join the queue for the checkout, whilst being informed by some assistant, whose job it appears to be to walk up and down informing shoppers that they could use the self-serve check out. “But I don’t work here!” I say. And no one has any manners anymore. I get so fed up with holding doors open for people who never say thank you and seem to think it’s their God forsaken right. Well, oh no it isn’t and a ‘thank you’ costs nothing!

And of course, there’s always the one item versus full trolley business. There I am, stood in the queue with only one item, two at the very most. I have that look on my face as I lean over to gaze into the shopper’s trolley in front of me. At this point I may sigh loudly hoping to attract the shopper’s attention. Sometimes the shopper looks and sees that I have one item and lets me go before them. But sometimes they don’t and then I can feel my face changing and the death stare appears. It doesn’t get me in front of them but, I know that they know that I have my eye on them.