All quiet and serene

Before I went off gallivanting to Kangaroo World, I was tagged by Lauren of My Aunt June to list seven things I thought were lame - I'm translating this term as things that annoy you enough to drive you into fits of quite unreasonable verbal crabbiness, or make you tut in that short-fused way that makes timid people avoid looking at you for a few moments. I don't quite understand what tagging really demands of its nominees, but by applying the rules of childhood games, I would guess that it's now my turn to compile a list.

Well, to my own mystification, having said all I need to say about British Airways, I can't currently think of seven annoying things. I am now all sweetness and light! Australia appears to have changed my personality - another couple of visits, and I may equal His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the serenity league. But this may be a little phase I'm going through, or might just be masked jet lag; I will get back to you on this one. Have a think about your own list, though. I know some of you can sometimes - very very rarely, I know - be a teensy little bit cross or impatient, and one or two of you have occasionally said a slightly bad word as well. You might be able to think of one or two things that are lame/slightly annoying.

Now, I've found that jet lag is a strange phenomenon: despite being amazingly self-disciplined and keeping fairly normal bedtimes since I got home, the unfulfilled urge persists to have little sleeps through the day and to get up at 4 a.m. to have breakfast and start banging about. Today the dog joined in by asking to be let out at 4.20 a.m. She does this by scuttling about my bedroom, her claws clicking on the floorboards, till I get the message. As this is a dog who loves her bed above all else, any anxious scuttling-about at such an unearthly hour should not be ignored. But there's nothing quite like standing haggardly outside your front door before dawn, with a coat on over your nightie, trying not to call loudly and abusively for a small dog to stop sniffing everything she can find in the street, and to bloody well get back indoors, to effectively put an end to any chance of falling asleep again.

Maybe I could just put Small Dog on the list of annoying things....maybe the Dalai Lama need not fear for his serene position after all.