Editor's Blog July 11th 2012
Seven Things I Hate About You.
Gibraltar is my home. It has been my home for over thirty years. In those thirty years I have seen Gibraltar grow to be the vibrant multicultural, relatively safe and prosperous country it is today.
But all is not well on planet Rock.
For all the good things about Gibraltar there a seven things that really annoy me about the place. I am sure that we all got our bugbears, so here are mine.
Lets start off with something light shall we? When I say ‘light’ not really, in fact this is one of my top hates. Imagine you are driving to wherever you need to be, and because we left everything for the last minute we are in a rush. We are driving up Line Wall when the car in front suddenly stops, the Vratha in the Honda civic sticks his head out the window and starts talking to another Vratha in a shit can BMW. I count to ten and beep my horn and all I get is a dirty look, like I have just butted in on the conversation that is going to cure world hunger. At this point, having an extremely short fuse, I eject out of the car and walk purposely towards the Honda Civic and its low IQ’d contents. The Vratha who senses impending doom raises a peace sign to his fellow species in the BMW and wheel spins down the road.
You are now walking through your estate. It is early morning and you are not quite awake. You turn a corner and find that all of the sudden your shoes have lost traction, due to the rubber coming into contact with a huge pile of dog excrement. The smell creeping up your legs and chest and not pausing, until like one of Mike Tyson’s upper cuts, it hits you bang on the nose. Recoiling in disgust you try and find a curb to scrape off the stickiest substance in the known universe. After trying to remove the offending turd for about ten minutes, you give up and try walk away the mess, leaving more skid marks than runway 3 at Heathrow.
I walk into a shoe shop. I need to replace the shoes that have just been destroyed by the contents of what appears to have been a large ruminant’s lower colon. Asking the nice young lady behind the counter, do you have a nice pair of brogues? To which the reply is ‘QUE?’ In the last ten years or so there has been an increase in the retail sector employing people who do not speak the Queens English. This is a British country with E N G L I S H being the main language, so why for the love of Shakespeare do I have to resort to speaking Spanish when I need anything from a jumbo box of condoms to a pack of Marlboro Lights?
When I pay for my nice new shoes I get asked if I want to pay in Euros. My brow will furrow and I will not be able to control the distain in my voice when I say, ‘No I would not like to pay in Euros, A. Because you are going to screw me on the exchange rate and B. Because the Legal Tender for my much-loved town is S T E R L I N G!’
After paying £65 for something that clearly costs no more than £27, I need to get to the Bank and withdraw some cash. As I round the corner I see the queue emanating from the sliding doors of my bank of choice. I join the back of the mad conger line, going nowhere fast. Twenty or so minutes later I arrive at the glass window, ask for my money and leave with the feeling that my lunch break has been spent listening to the 70 plus gang who are there to collect their pension.
It’s the weekend and I want to go to Tarifa. I get up early. Actually, I don’t go to bed at all, as I do not want to get caught up in the queues leaving Gibraltar. I get to the Sundial, it’s not yet 0900hrs and yet the traffic has come to a stand still. In front of me there are several hundred Spanish registered vehicles that have been coming in since six in the morning to refuel. I wave to the driver of the single Gibraltar registered vehicle in the queue, he nods back knowingly.
A man has to eat, I go to Morrisons. My Skull Candy wrapped around my ears, Ipod blaring Slash’s new album. I walk through the door and go up the fruit and veg isle. I notice shelves, empty like a Chernobyl playground. People are running around with trollies full to the brim. One would think that they are doing the last shopping trip before the apocalypse. I grab my meal for one, a bottle of wine and run towards the first available till. I don’t find one and panic sets in as I run several hundred calculations through my head, based on my knowledge of flow dynamics to see if I can select the right till to get me out of the store as soon as possible. I chose the second to last one, as it all seems to be going well. I arrive promptly to the check out girl and she switches her little light on and starts balancing the till. I want to kill. Another lady turns up; they discuss the weather, children and what they had to eat for breakfast. When she is good and ready she swipes the first idem through the scanner and nothing happens, again and again she sweeps the item. After 23 sweeps she switches her little light on and we wait. By this stage I am listening to Queens’ I want to break free. The items are successfully scanned, the Till lady says that will be £27.29, in Spanish GGGRRRRRRR!!
Ed.
