I hate the way people have to diminish each other in order to feel better about themselves - everything you say has to be belittled, everything you've done has to be made to seem worthless. Every holiday you have, every car you drive, the other person has a bigger, better version. The way they outdo each other on every aspect of daily life - searching your eyes to check they've registered envy and misery.
You can never have a conversation with them, because it will always evolve into a one sided display of bragging.
The most odious breeds are usually found in local councils, NHS and police offices. They poison the the very air you breathe with their venomous bile. Looking at you as if you crawled out of the sewer.
Their houses are clinically clean, minimal, always decorated according to the latest interior trend, no dust, no books, a strategically placed dinner table in the centre of a dining room, a churchillian war room with table, where they can do battle with the opposition, where they can out brag their guests.
They usually live on a housing estate, a private housing estate where all the houses are identical, ghettoised from the rest of society.
"Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same."
My mother always used to sing that song every time we went past those pretty, samey houses.
They carry on with their day, safe in the knowledge that another person has been diminished and made smaller in their eyes. They triumph every time they sense a wining shot over some loser in a smaller car, they are bigger, better, shinier people. They can get back behind their desks and smile smugly, read their copies of the Daily Mail and tell themselves they're higher up the food chain.
Thatcher's children.
And that's why I bailed out of middle class life, the office, the politics and the "dress from Next" brigade.
Soulless people with no reflection.
Here endeth today's sermon.
