Is anyone selling Creative Juices on special offer?

...'cos all mine seem to have dried up whilst I wasn't looking. Not only do I seem to have no drive to write anything, I'm even finding reading fiction to be tiresome. (And, given the size of my unread books pile, I'd better get over that soon). Ditto web design, drawing and RPGs.

Probably just another symptom of life being a bit of a pain right now, but I really could do with being able to go down Tesco's to the Literary and Artistic Ingredients aisle and buying a nice tin of freshly-squeezed Creative Juices. Even a tetra-pack of UHT made-from-condensed would do...

MC

Manners: Cheap, Easy to use, and Very Unfashionable

This mornings Independent features an opinion article on public rage attacks (warning: contains strong language). It's about life in London, but from my experience it applies to much of the rest of the UK too. This item struck a chord with me: I'm getting more and more aware of the tendency these days for people to act as if any minor inconvenience or obstruction to their unfettered actions is an insult requiring a tantrum and threats as the immediate response.

It ties up with another bugbear of mine, the seemingly wide assumption that rules meant to help or protect us (be it as individuals, groups or society as a whole) are somehow now optional and can be disregarded if remotely convenient. Disabled parking bays, for instance - it seems they don't apply when it's raining. Or the hard shoulder? A spare lane in traffic jams.

I don't want to turn into a reactionary old fart. (And some of the worst offenders re the above are ROFs who think they're above regulations or manners). But should I ever manage a military coup (ha!) there's a subset of the population that is going to get a sharpish introduction to the Pillory and the EU Rotten Tomato Mountain as a stern reminder that actually no they can't do what they like when they like and throw obnoxious fits at the rest of us when they don't get their way.

MC