HOT weather is great until you go to the park and realise midges aren’t the only bastards the sun has brought out. But which annoyance makes you most want to destroy the place so no one can ever use it again?
6. Wasps
Wasps are the least of your worries in your local park – they can fly away from you or you can run away from them in an emasculating manner. An angry wasp trapped in your bedroom or car is a different matter altogether. If Elon Musk really wants to be remembered for contributing something to humanity, why doesn’t he invent a window a wasp can fly out of on its own?
5. Ice cream vans
It makes good business sense for the ice cream man to park up by the playground, but it also means that every parent hates him. His van no longer needs to be a front for tobacco and/or drugs now he’s charging over a fiver for a 99, but even that price can’t be more disturbing than the weird painting of a deformed Goofy slobbering over a cone on the back of the van.
4. Weed smokers
They might have a mellower vibe than drinkers, but you won’t be feeling mellow when one of their mates turns up with a f**k-off speaker to play dub with bass so powerful it rattles your teeth. Still, at least it keeps you awake – unlike that Richard Osman book you were trying to finish. Shame you’re getting the munchies from the smoke, and the only nearby food source is a van selling salmonella with fried onions and ketchup.
3. Drinkers
You’re nostalgic for your days of drinking tinnies in the park until you have to sit near a bunch of lads getting progressively louder and swearier as the cans go down. And there’s the question of where is the worst place for the one with the feeble bladder to have the inevitable piss? Behind the tree next to you, or in a bottle in full view of all the families enjoying the park? Time to move before a Hard Dad comes over and the aggro starts.
2. Joggers
The fair-weather joggers now join the elite hardcore, and all of them run straight at you. Why should they risk adding 1/1000th of a second to their lap time by swerving around you when you can easily jump out of their way and be hit by a bike? Meanwhile, struggling first-time runners threaten to collapse and die in a wheezing heap as they stumble past your spot on the grass. Their bright red corpses would put such a downer on your trip out.
1. Circus ‘performers’
These pricks are intolerable when they string up a tightrope between a couple of beautiful trees so nobody can sit under them to get a bit of shade. You also have to observe a generous exclusion zone around their woeful attempts at chucking juggling clubs about. And to top it off the knobheads’ rejection of the social conventions of personal hygiene and deodorant means you don’t want to get downwind of them on a hot day.
