We all have a favourite pet peeve don’t we. For some it’s people who speak with their mouths full, for others it could be something such as a person leaving a light on or not shutting a door when they come through it or even not putting the lavatory seat down after they’ve been.

Well, I think I’ve identified my own favourite pet peeve and it is…

Rudeness!

And the reason that I hate rudeness so very much is because it is becoming more prevalent in Western society than ever before.

I know that rudeness is not a new thing. People have been rude for millennia; but rudeness that was once often seen as unacceptable is now the absolute basic norm.

And I’m getting so pissed off with it!

Someone was very rude to me on Saturday night. We’d been for a meal to celebrate our granddaughter’s 19^th birthday and had a lovely time. The food was gorgeous, the staff were brilliant (Efendy, Skipton, you must try it) and a good time was had by all.

There was myself and Ange, Erin and her boyfriend Billy, Becky and Paul and Ange’s brother Steve. And it was great. We had a laugh and a few drinks and the atmosphere was superb.

After the meal it was decided by majority vote to go for a couple of drinks at the Sound Bar, which is a smashing place that I’ve mentioned before on here. Unfortunately, when we reached the Sound Bar we were dismayed to find that they were closing early for the night. Undeterred we crossed the bus station carpark and went to the nearest pub (The Fleece, Skipton, don’t try it) and entered therein.

There was some kind of agonisingly loud disco going on, which was ran by a filthy-mouthed man in a Dolly Parton wig, make-up and a dress who was masquerading as a woman. The music was excessively loud and the first thing that caught my eye when we went in was two very drunk forty something women clinging onto each other for dear life whilst belting out the words to Living on a Prayer in a hopelessly tuneless fashion that resembled, in both sight and sound, a pair of violently rutting elephant seals.

Not a particularly auspicious start. But worse was to come.

Why, oh why, oh why do some people think that it’s ok to accost you as if they’ve known you all your life when they’re drunk. I know alcohol removes inhibitions but why do they have to get in your face with their fag ash and Kopperberg breath and a thin sheen of perspiration from their ungainly efforts on the dance floor?

I ask that question because that is what faced us as we stood at the bar waiting for the half-asleep bar staff to serve us.

The people in question were a heavily set woman who seemed to have abandoned all notions of grace and poise and a shaven headed f**kwit who clearly thought he was Skipton’s answer to stand-up comedy. And it was he who was rude to me.

To cut a long story short he called me “Gandalf.”

Now, here’s the thing.

1. I know I look like Gandalf or even Dumbledore.
2. I don’t really care that I do; I’m comfortable in my own skin.
3. He called me “Gandalf” about four times and, despite his obvious merriment, it got less and less funny with each hackneyed attempt.
4. I didn’t know him from Adam.
5. I hadn’t been rude to him.
6. I’ve heard it a thousand times before.
7. Rudeness is the lowest form of wit

I can take a joke. Believe me, nobody can take a joke better than me. But to go up to someone you don’t know and call them names just for cruel fun makes you a total and utter c**t in my eyes. It wasn’t so much that the idiot said it to me; I would have been offended for anyone else who had to endure his boorish, drink-sodden effort at being funny.

And you could also tell that in his eyes he was being somehow novel and fresh when in reality, as I’ve pointed out at number 6, he wasn’t the first to say it and he almost certainly won’t be the last.

But me being me, I let it go.

I know plenty of blokes, and women too, who would have put him firmly on his arse with a well-aimed straight left or uppercut. Me? Nah! I’m not going to sit in the back of a police car explaining my actions and ruining my (and my granddaughter’s) evening just because of some piss-wet-through rummy who thinks he’s Ricky Gervais.

I didn’t even give him the luxury of a response.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I could have given him a heck of a response. I could have said, “F**k off you fat-faced, bald-headed, beady-eyed, pointy-nosed, sweaty, B.O reeking pimple on the ring piece of the universe.”

I could have said that.

But I didn’t.

And do you know why?

Because that would have been stooping to his crass little level and I’m not like him. Yes, I probably do look like that character from The Lord of the Rings but I have a damn sight more class than he’ll ever have. I also like to think that one day he’s going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person and end up in the AMU of the nearest hospital.

Actually, now I think about it, the landlord really ought to have a word with him. He cost the pub the loss of seven drinks that could have been sold if we hadn’t all left the awful place.

As we made our way home I had mixed feelings. Part of me was glad that I didn’t rise to the paralytic oaf but a small part of me was wishing that for once, just this once, I should have smashed his smug, gurning face in. Not just for my benefit but for everyone else as well because I recognised in him all the obnoxious traits of the serial piss taker.

I wasn’t the first person he’s insulted that way and I won’t be the last. The drink-addled alacrity with which he approached me was nothing new to him. He’s done this before. He really does need decking but I’ll let someone else do that. Someone really unpleasant hopefully.

But rudeness itself is all around us. It’s everywhere you go. Drivers are incredibly rude these days, children and teenagers seem to take rudeness to dizzy new heights, bosses and colleagues are so stressed that being blunt is often the only recourse, I see and hear people being rude to shop staff and waiters for no good reason and there is countless man hours’ worth of rudeness online.

And it’s got me thinking a lot about it, so yesterday, just as a small experiment, I put a post on Threads that said, “Why and when did abject rudeness become the norm?”

I got one reply from some guy who said, “Ever since the internet made people brave.”

Damn it he’s right. There are millions of so-called “keyboard warriors” in this world who love nothing more than slating other people and being as rude and offensive as possible. And it’s ok for them because they have the safety net of not knowing the people they are attacking or even have the remotest chance of ever being in the same room as them. They insult and offend via distance and it’s just about as cowardly as it could possibly get.

And that’s the norm. You can say what you like, so long as you don’t cross certain boundaries (although some do) and make all manner of unsubstantiated remarks about other human beings. I tell you; Western society is going to the wall. Notice I didn’t say Western civilisation? There’s nothing civilised about any of these people.

Keyboard warriors? I’ve shat ‘em.

I’m giving serious thought to backing away from social media all together. With the exception of posting about what I write. That’s how wound up I feel about rudeness right now. It’s there every-bloody-time I go on Facebook or Instagram or Threads (I don’t do X, Musk is also very rude) I see some crap individual having a snidey little jibe at someone else. And I hate it!

To be perfectly honest with you, this has been building up in me for some time now and I think that clown on Saturday night was the last straw. I don’t need to put myself in situations like that anymore whether it be online or in real life (social media is not real life by the way) or anywhere come to that. I’m a 58-year-old man with a decent brain who loves books and intricacies of progressive rock and I need, nay crave, more intellectual stimulation and conversation than standing in some naff, crowded, noisy pub listening to Bon Jovi at a billion decibels and being told I look like someone from Tolkien’s epic masterpiece.

To summarise, I’m not rude to other people and I ain’t gonna take it from them anymore. I won’t get violent but I am a wordsmith – be warned!

Rant over.

Thanks for reading.