Smokers – if you must perambulate, kindly keep your fag hand close to your body. Under no circumstances should you swing your arm back and forth like a censer. Actually, even non-smokers should stop doing this pendulum-arm thing. It is irritating.
Also, smokers who congregate in pedestrian thoroughfares - I appreciate that there are fewer and fewer places in the city where one can freely smoke. It is good that you are outside. It is not good, however, that you take the opportunity to revenge yourself on the non-smoking world at large by forcing us to cower as you wave your cigarettes around for emphasis, occasionally jabbing forcefully at the air to illustrate your (no doubt well-reasoned and justified) point. Cease and desist.
If you telephone my workplace and the person to whom you wish to speak is unavailable, I will offer to take a message. Read it again: “I will offer to
take a message.” A message, for the uninitiated, is a short and succinct communication, typically consisting of one’s name, telephone number, and possibly a short phrase providing a brief overview of the conversation that you had intended to have with the unavailable party. E.g., “Could you let X know that Y called. My number is xxxx xxxx. It’s in relation to the last letter I received.” That, right there, is a text-book perfect message. A message is not an opportunity for you to do any of the following:
1. complain that the person you wanted to speak to never calls you back;
2. offer to wait on hold until they are free, thereby tying up the phone line;
3. request that I look into the future to determine at what point the unavailable person might be available – unless I volunteer this information, I undoubtedly DO NOT KNOW;
4. verbally abuse me for not being so intimately familiar with the details of your matter that I am able to recall in an instant your surname and telephone number without assistance;
spend more than five minutes blathering on about some entirely unrelated issue;
5. repeatedly badger me to give you legal advice, especially after I have told you that I am not legally permitted to give you such advice, even if I knew what such advice ought to be or if I even gave the tiniest of shits about your manifold problems;
6. attempt to extract a promise from me as to the future behaviour of some third party, e.g. “He definitely has to call me back! You have to get him to call me back!” If you tell me the message is urgent, I will write down that it is urgent. I will not hold a gun to my boss’ head to force him to return your call.
As previously stated, stonewashed jeggings are the work of Satan. I am considering expanding this category to include wet-look leggings. Why on earth anyone would want to look as though they had fallen arse-first into the BP oil spill is completely beyond me.
Mainly because it's been a while since I saw a "health reporter" who favoured sexyface, tousled hair and clubwear for her broadcasts. 
