Grumpy old man

I left the house this morning in fine fettle, to drop my car off for an MOT and service. Got to have it ship shaped ready to sell before the trip. Well ship shaped would be a miracle with a Fiesta, but you get my drift.

Anyway, it's been one of those mornings where events have conspired to bring the Victor Meldrew out in me:

• Yet again I could hardly move in the Northcote Road Starbucks for haughty mothers and their prams, with countless bloody children scuttling around the floor getting under my feet. Not only do they seem to turn the place into the equivalent of a busy supermarket fruit and veg aisle packed with trolleys, they always take up the comfy chairs and the sofa, and what's worst is that sometimes a small child will get a sofa to itself, meaning that if I want to sit on the sofa I'll run the risk of a) having to listen to someone going on about how marvellous their new curtain fabric is, and b) getting covered in the fine film of jam that seems to emanate from small children. I'm not saying mothers and children have no right to use a coffee shop, that would be unfair, but why can't they have their own special coffee shop?
  
• On the way home I saw a young woman being accosted at her doorstep by a couple of Bible bashers trying to push literature onto her, probably copies of Watchtower. They should just come round to my door, I'll give them something to think about. Previous Jehovah's Witnesses have finished conversations with me looking punch drunk. It's nice to think I've maybe converted a few to godlessness.
  
• Walking home over Bolingroke Grove, the traffic lights went red, and as has been the case several times recently, one or two cars continued on through the red lights, even though the green man was showing on the pedestrian crossing. This really riles me. I've taken to stepping out in to the road in front of these cars that run the lights so they have to swerve around me, making eye contact with the drivers, and occasionally mouthing 'What the **** do you think you're doing?'. Maybe not wise. Maybe I should recruit the buggy brigade down Starbucks to protest with me, mothers with prams seem to get away with murder.