... to ask if MN has a grumpy 'old' women topic?

[Pipbin]

I know there is pedants corner but I was wondering if there was anywhere where like minded people who want to complain about words like amazeballs, and other grumpy things can go and be grumpy without being told to get a life?

I think I've discovered the antidote to grumpage. I'm watching 'The Station Agent', which I recorded from Film4 last week. It's so gentle and the main characters are borderline grumpy misanthrope, the lot of them - well, except for the guy in the coffee van. Soothing balm for the GOW contingent.

(Just recording for posterity that it took 4 goes for the autocorrect on my macbook to give in and let me have - here we go - grumpage. Phew only 2 swift kicks to the autocorrect this time.)

Don't get me started on 'must have' items. The very phrase makes me stabby. And why, in posh interiors magazines, do you find side tables for £1,463.74? Why the 74p? (Yes, I know the £1463 is stupid too but stay with me). Why not just round it up to the next pound? Do they think that the extra 26p would be the thing which puts people off?

Realise this may be a very minority rant.

My aunt, who used to work in retail, told me that the 99p thing in shops is because it forces the cashier to put the transaction through the till to provide change, rather than pocketing the bank note. I guess it's a bit of an anachronism now most transactions are paid by card.

Are we allowed to hate Christmas on this thread, and allude to the fact that our Christmas Day might actually be a bit average, with lots of telly watching, a bit of bickering and food that doesn't look anything like it does in the catalogue or on the adverts?

Please say yes, please say yes

yes, yes, yes! You have just described Christmas at my house, SirChenjin.

Thank you Scone!! You have no idea how good it is to hear that I'm not alone

I've just watched one of those deeply annoying christmas adverts which intimate everyone is in a jolly extended family and loves having a house full of excited children, mums in the kitchen without sherry and happy dads in Icelandic jumpers.
What utter nonsense.

My favorite Christmas poem:

Lines For A Christmas Card
by Hilare Belloc

May all my enemies go to hell,
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

Christmas at christmas is fine and we do have nice food but it doesn't look like a magazine. We have fun and then someone gets over tired and there's a squabble and then we eat chocolates and watch the telly

And I want people to stop using U when the mean You. U no wot i mean?

As a student I had a seasonal job at Past Times. While I was there it was decided by Head Office that all the prices would be changed from £n.99 to £(n+1). This happened overnight

Customers preferred it, finding it "more honest".

Staff preferred it, with less change to process.

Managers preferred it, with less change to bank.

Customers are said to trust random supermarket prices such as 63p because they assume the shop has charged exactly as little as it can. They also like "whole pound" prices in the supermarket because they assum e the shop has rounded down. Wrong on both counts.

All that values ending in change is fine for small purchases. But for stupidly expensive items listed in magazines, rounding to the nearest £ would do. Anyone willing thinking it is reasonable to pay more than (i will be generous) a couple hundred £ for an end table surely doesnt give a flip about any digits past the tens position?

I'm sorry, I've had a busy day, tired old woman here. so going to grump about all these threads about baby names - what on earth? Most of them would have been beaten to the ground at my school.....

I have baby name hidden. Highly recommended.

scone good idea !

I want to hide baby names.....but I quite enjoy both the feelings of righteous indignation at the made up you-neeq ones, and the humour of the rather pious ones from Greek mythology which are destined never to darken the door of a state school.

I quite enjoy baby names. Very entertaining watching the steady march up the charts of names which were thought completely bats and way out when we suggested them 15-20 years ago.

Hilaire Belloc can write me a nice Christmas card for our former neighbour, if he needs to fill an empty afternoon.

I had to hide baby names because of all the anti-Americanism on them.

That's because Americans all give their babies names like Elle-pronounced-Ellie (as per the recent 'lively' thread)

Or Destiny.
I once witnessed a child fleeing its parent in a shop in upstate USA, with the parent shouting, 'Destiny! You come right back here!'

This was in a town where you could pop into City Hall for a gun license (with an s) and then cross the street to Woolworth's and emerge 10 minutes later with a large gun and a year's supply of ammo (the sort that could kill deer), but you couldn't buy fireworks, because fireworks were dangerous and someone might get hurt.

Oooh - while we're on the subject.
In John Lewis yesterday (ducking all the sodding penguins every bloody where) go to pay and am asked 'yorrite?' Twice! 'Yes of course I'm bloody all right...' What happened to 'Can I help you?' Do you want to pay?' Almost every sweet young assistant everywhere asks me 'yorrite?' And I just want to snarl back at them - but don't because they think it's OK and no one bloody tells them otherwise......

My children are Elle (pronounced Ellie), Destiny, and Dakota.

Just kidding. But one (a male) does have a surname as a first name.

One of my many bugbears is the lack of please and thank you from shop assistants. I have to force myself to hand over money to someone who has just held out their hand and told me how much it's going to cost. I know how much it's going to cost - I can count.

My grump - go into any charity shop and buy something- I have the right money and they have one of those ......computer tills that takes 17 stabs on the screen for one paperback book. And then they press the wrong bit and have to start again... grrr.... On that I shall retire to my bed

...and the humour of the rather pious ones from Greek mythology which are destined never to darken the door of a state school.
Or those who get it slightly wrong. I once worked with The Public (nice people as a whole,wouldn't have them round for tea though) and taking down a family's details. "So, that's Elle, Dakota and Nike?" (Pronounced properly) "no, it's pronounced Niik" I had to be restrained from grabbing her by the lapels and shouting "no,it fucking is not"
Dentists fuck me right off today. Trained by the British university system?Then fucking work for the nhs.