Last week I was lamenting on Facebook the fact that one of my new kitchen appliances plays a tune – but isn’t in tune!  The tumble drier is bang on, but the last note of the washing machine’s tune is wrong.  I even videoed it and posted it so my friends could agree.  It sparked a lengthy debate – and I was particularly pleased that one friend (who also happens to be a highly trained musician and head of the music department at my daughter’s school) gave a full technical explanation of what was wrong! (A full semi tone flat, don’t you know!?!)

This got me to thinking how 10 years ago I would not have predicted being annoyed by the tune played by some white goods – because white goods wouldn’t have played a tune!  So what else is ridiculously annoying now, but we wouldn’t have foreseen:

1. Someone changing the channel so your double recording on Sky+ fails.  The thought of recording 2 things, in real time, in fact even one thing in real time, would have been mind blowing.  I remember when our eldest was a baby weeping hysterically because ‘all I want to do is watch Dalziel and Pascoe’ (early 2000s detective series!)  Those were the days when you could watch in real time, or watch on video after the whole programme was recorded – there was no other option.  Sky+ was invented between having my first 2 kids and second 2 kids and made for a much happier mother of a newborn! But still – the clashes thing is annoying.  Although now in the world of catch up TV and TV on demand, this might be a soon forgotten annoyance.
2. People being incommunicado.  A decade ago if you wanted to get in touch with someone then you’d try their home phone and mobile and that was about it.  You could email – but that relied on them logging on to an actual computer to read it – so wasn’t instantaneous. Now with smart phones you would expect all of the above to be instant, or you could Facebook / Tweet / Instagram / Snapchat to try and get in touch.  But if someone doesn’t respond to any of these media, it is all the more annoying.  10 year old boys appear to be even worse than their fathers at this #sorepointfromschoolruntoday
3. I always assumed my friends were quite intelligent and had a basic grasp of spelling and grammar.  Social media has proved, in some cases, for me to be very much mistaken.
4. When your broadband fails.  A large chunk of my life relies on the super whizzy fibreoptic broadband at home – so that I can work remotely rather than going into the office, and to do the shopping, banking, holiday booking, social media oversharing etc. So when the broadband is down, I feel like I’ve lost my right arm.  Not to mention the woe felt by the children if the wifi fails for even a minute (when the 3 year old is wailing because Youtube and Netflix don’t work, you can see who they take after!!) Who would have thought even a decade ago how reliant we would be on our broadband connections.  The children will never appreciate the fact that historically you had to wait for everyone to finish their telephone conversation (on the landline of course) so that you could use the dial up modem to access the internet – very, very slowly!!
5. Multiple colour coded bins.  There were bins, with bin bags in, then bin men emptied them.  End of.  Although i guess we should be grateful that in Worcestershire we only have grey (household waste), green (all recycling) and brown (garden waste). Other counties in the UK have many more receptacles for different waste products – and don’t even get me started on Germany where my sister lives – I think she has 8 different waste routes (and woe betide you if you put something in the incorrect one!!)
6. Having blog posts in your ‘drafts’ but no time to finish them off!  Who would have known what a blog was back then?  Who would have expected I’d have 4 kids, a business, and loads of other stuff to ridiculously fill my days! A decade ago it was just the 2 kids (and a husband who’d had a vasectomy) and I worked for a large company, not our own business – oh how times  have changed!  Anyway, on that note,  I’m going to post this so it doesn’t sit in my drafts any longer!!