rant rant rant rant rant

Me & Georgie went to Switzerland at the weekend to visit her aunts. It's a gorgeous country and the sunshine, amazing food and wine, mountains, greenery, fresh air and incredible levels of hospitality revitalised me. It also further tickled my already itchy feet, but that was inevitable!

On the plane on the way back (I'll skip the bit about how much I hate airports) I sat there hot and tired, somewhat stressed and slightly nervous (I don't like flying), when I felt my arm being prodded by the school-marmy woman beside me. I looked round to have the phrase "can you not pick your nose!" barked at me. I then realised that I had indeed sent an investigative finger into the opening of my nostril. It wasn't in far, and to call it 'picking' was contentious. See, the drawback of a green, lush country is rampant hayfever. My poor nose had been blocked, itchy, and uncomfortable for days and a brief, relieving scratch/prod seemed necessary.

Granted, nose-picking isn't all that pleasant, but surely you give it more than 10 seconds before complaining to a complete stranger about it? Or, unless you're a busy-body headmistress type who believes her hang ups and views on manners are of the highest priority, you just bloody leave it! It really annoyed me. "Do you want to mind your own business?" I asked her. "No, its disgusting," she barked back. So I just openly laughed in her face, my favourite thing to do to people who are unjustifiably annoyed at me, as it tends to annoy them further and by this point my only salvation was the thought that she was more annoyed at me than I was at her.

With that encounter, it became very apparent I that was going back to England.

It reminded me of another airoplane (note inclusing of an 'o', yanks ;-) encounter, this time with an Israeli couple. I didn't know they were Isreali at first, they were just a couple who were virtually having sex in the seats next to me. The guy was horrible, all posey and buffed, and the earnestness and solemnity with which they tounged eachother was disconcerting - it was almost self-congratulatory, like they had something to proove. Still, I let them get on with it figuring it wasn't actually hurting me. Since I was in Asia, it was fucking hot and I had a 12 hour flight ahead of me, I took my sandles off, crossed my legs and settled down to read my book.

Seconds later, I felt myself being prodded. I turned around and an Isreali accent, dripping with contemptuous disgust and emenating from a face of abject horror, spat "your foot".
"what?" says I.
"your foot! Will you move it!"
My bare foot was facing him at an oblique angle. I don't know much about Israeli culture but I figured that maybe they held a foot taboo, like certain other cultures I'd encountered. Despite this, I wasn't going to dutifully drop my foot and apologise just because his ridiculous belief caused him to get upset by my utterly harmless posture. If he'd asked me nicely, maybe. But I'm not going to be ordered to pander to taboos I think ludicrous.
"Oh, OK, but why, out of interest?" I ask, perfectly reasonably.
Man shares dumbfounded glance with woman. "your FOOT!" he says again.

Of course, I shifted it because I'm a reasonable person. But the irony and hypocrisy on so many levels left me livid! I guarantee he was in a minority in that plane with his daft foot-fear. However, I bet the majority would have seen it as intrusive and/or offensive to see him abjectly molesting his girlfriend in public. Also, if you have a gripe about manners, employ some yourself when you inflict your beliefs on others and ask them to alter their behaviour for your benefit. Same goes for nose-picking school-marm bitch.

It's your problem, people! Live and let live, eh? Or in this case: live and let drop that which has no tangible, adverse effect on any level other than that which you conciously decide upon.