Dear work colleague,

I came into the god-dammed office at seven a.m. to get some work done.

I didn’t get here so early just so I could listen in rapture as you cough every thirty seconds and play random YouTube videos on your work PC.

If you don’t turn the volume down on your PC and turn the frequency down on your coughing, I’m going to strangle you.

I like nurses. In the last year, I’ve seen more of them than I usually would expect to see in a lifetime. I am adept at waiting in waiting rooms for one of you to deign to call my name so you can zap me with monstrous machines, extract assorted fluids, or just shake your head and tut like a backstreet mechanic would do when he sees a knackered old car.

It would help, however, if when you did call my name, you did it a bit louder. I’m surrounded by people having conversations and kiddies crying; being able to stand up the first time you called would make both our lives that little bit easier.

Look, I’ve just gone and got a ticket for my car. See? I’m opening my car door, placing the ticket very carefully on the dash so it doesn’t blow over and get me a fine the minute I close the door, and now I’m trying to find my way between the other cars to I can do whatever it was I came here to do. (I usually forget).

Sitting in your car, glowering at me when you realise I’m not leaving but have just arrived, is not the way to gain my assistance in finding you somewhere else to park. Besides, there are loads of spaces over there! Just there! Another 50 feet from where you are! Just look!

Plonker.

You’re usually in a queue, and if I’m right it’s not the first time you’ve ever been shopping.

So you know the routine, assemble your shopping on the belt, pack it as the nice till person swipes it through the scanner that goes beep, and prepare your card and / or money so it’s ready when the nice person asks.

Don’t wait until your shopping is all nicely packed and arranged in the trolley, and the nice person has been sitting and waiting for two minutes, before you then try to find your purse at the bottom of your bag and hold the rest of us up even more.

Believe me, we have more than enough practice at tutting and muttering under our breath; we really don’t need any more.

I love spicy food. I love eating ice-cream. Sadly, the combination of them and lying on the sofa for several hours turns my stomach into a boiling pit of acid that re-introduces itself to the back of my throat all night.

Being able to burp boiling acid would be handy in a superhero (of what sort, I must confess I don’t really know), but in me it’s just another reminder that age does not creep up gracefully; it foists itself upon me in ways I will never be able to imagine.

The recipe said “add the sliced chicken and garlic to the preheated vegetable oil in the pan and stirfry until the chicken is barely tender”.

It didn’t say “drop the chicken into the preheated vegetable oil in the pan, causing the oil to spray out in a fine superheated mist and burn the backs of your fingers”.

Naturally, I did the latter.

I’m just incapable of cooking.

I press the little button on the right hand stalk in my car, and the windscreen washers go spray spray spray and the wipers then go wipe wipe wipe.

And then, just as all the refreshing spray has been swept away, the wipers automatically go wipe wipe wipe again, smear road salt and grime all over my clean windscreen and completely undo the point of me doing the spray spray spray thing in the first place.

Now I can’t see, dammit.

I have two word documents, three spreadsheets, a PDF document, five tabs in a web browser, Outlook and two explorer windows open.

It’s 2012. The modern world. My phone can handle a greater workload than this.

So why, dear archaic creaking laptop, are you two characters behind when I type? It’s really irritating.

Its a desk. Just a desk. I’ve managed to get what you consider to be the best position purely by being the first in to the office in the morning, and going where my desk, marked with a big white label with my name on it, is now located.

By handy coincidence I can now surf the Internet without having everybody else see my monitor, which is nice but unnecessary as I actually work when I’m here.

So get used to it. I have a nice location, and that makes me happy inside. You wouldn’t deny a recently cured cancer patient his happiness, would you?

Yes, I said it. I feel so much better now.

Dear BMW 1-series driver,

You didn’t see that cyclist on the roundabout as you stormed past me to try and get the jump on other traffic.

You nearly killed him. Seriously, you missed him by about four inches and as he was on the roundabout, coming across in front of us, he clearly had the right of way.

You are a dick.