Ahh… it’s Valentine’s Day. Love is in the air. As I write this it’s bang on the time that the lovers amongst us are tucking into a love sausage or making the most of a 2 for 1 offer at Pizza Express, but alas not me. I’ve been repellent to women for a whole 30 years now – an impressive record I’m sure you’ll agree.

I don’t think it’s related to being alone on 14th February – God knows I’m used to that – but for some reason a lot of things today are getting right on my nerves. Here’s a few of them.

Hair

If I had a superpower, I wouldn’t want to be able to fly or shoot webs out of my wrists or anything like that. I’d just like to be press ‘pause’ on the growth of my hair. As someone who has what you might call social anxiety, I find the whole process of going to the barber’s and getting my hair cut difficult. Having gone through it and left with my hair looking nice and tidy, I’d love to be able to halt its progress instead of the bloody stuff being all over the place again four weeks later. The same goes for facial hair – I can’t stand the feeling of a hairy chin so I stand in front of the mirror holding a razor way more often than I’d like.

Earphones

How do people get them to stay in their ears? I wear mine while hoovering or on long car journeys (as a passenger, of course) – I don’t know if my ears are just a weird shape or something but they just won’t bloody stay in! The sound they produce is disappointingly tinny as well.

The lack of an affordable ad-free YouTube

You’re welcome to say this is a First World Problem, but I watch a fair amount of YouTube (I’m too old for TikTok) and it is infested with ads. Want to watch an Alan Partridge clip from the 90s? Well you’re going to have to sit through two noisy 30 second adverts first! You can actually pay a monthly fee to get an ad-free YouTube, but because it comes with bells and whistles like being able to continue playing in the background and download videos to watch offline, they charge £11.99 a month for it! If they just offered an ad-free option for, say £5.99 a month, I’d be right there.

Waking up early on a day off

My work pattern these days means that I have one day in, one day off, two days in, one day off, one day in and then one day off. Why is it, then, that on the days I’ve got to go to work I feel like I could turn the alarm off and sleep for several more hours but when it’s my day off and I have no alarms set I am wide awake before 7am? It’s infuriating. Going back to sleep isn’t an option, either, as I’m very much a ‘you wake up, you get up’ sort of person.

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Anyway, that’s enough of the moaning. I’m going to leave you with a love song for Valentine’s Day.

If you know me just a little bit, you’ll be aware that I am a huge fan of Arctic Monkeys. While I wait for their new album (due this year), today I was listening to their early work. The Bakery was a B side to Fluorescent Adolescent, a song from the album Favourite Worst Nightmare that reached no. 2 in the UK singles chart in 2007.

Alex Turner is a brilliant lyricist and in the early Monkeys stuff he was particularly good at taking very relatable scenarios and putting them to music. In this one there’s a girl he fancies and he like seeing her about the place, and gets a bit annoyed when she’s not around. 2 minutes and 57 seconds of adolescent innocence. Enjoy.

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Thanks for reading this load of old moaning. I’ve not been doing much writing recently – not been in the best place, mind wise – but hopefully I’ll soon be back on track!

Lee