THESE MAJOR IRRITANTS ARE DRIVING ME UP THE WALL!

A SURVEY shows we fly off the handle quite a lot these days, becoming ever more impatient in an age of instant everything. My own twin bugbears are technology and the slow strangulation of the English language.

I just hate those wretched windows which pop up when I am trying to concentrate on my screen. All I want to see is the document I have called up, not endless adverts for this and that nor repeated offers of updates already rejected umpteen times.

I admit to a strong desire to throw all the wretched machinery out of the window and reach for pen and ink.

As for the use of English, of course I know that all living languages evolve and that over time words just change meaning but it still sets my teeth on edge to hear “decimated” substituted for “devastated”. If something is decimated then 90 per cent of it is still intact.

For a long time I have been irritated at the slack way some newspapers, including the broadsheets, refer to members of the House of Lords as Lady Jane Bloggs or Lord Joe Soap when talking about life peers. You cannot put a title before a Christian name unless the person is the son or daughter of a duke or marquess or in the case of a woman the daughter of an earl.

Now, heaven spare us, Kensington Palace itself has done it and called Lord Hain Lord Peter Hain.

Sloppy lot! Grrrrr!