5 things I just don't get

Maybe it is because I live abroad, or maybe because we live out in the sticks so pretty much ignore what most people seem to be doing or wearing, or maybe I have just been wandering round with my eyes down focussing almost completely on my own life and problems the last few years. I don't know. But here are five of the very many things that I just don't get at the moment.

1) How, and why, did going to the supermarket in one's PJs become acceptable? I am sure that when I left the UK in 1998 that no-one would have dreamed of going to the supermarket in their nightwear. But it is apparently quite common. I don't get it.

2) Similarly, school run chic. Really? Does this whole school gate mum cliquiness exist? Do people really stand there judging other mums for what they wear? I mean, as long as they're not in their PJs, does it really matter?

3) Why do people whine about / sneer at blogs and bloggers? Not just mummybloggers (hate that term) but bloggers in general? Why do people care that some of us choose to share parts of our lives? Why do they sneer that no-one wants to read us? And why when I mention my blog in real life do some people think it is OK to mock or sneer? Is a blog some kind of inferior way of writing by default? Are blogs all the same dreary rubbish? I don't think so. I don't know many blogs which are dreary rubbish. You know why? Because I don't read blogs that I don't enjoy. And I shut up about them. I don't waste energy worrying about blogs I happen not to enjoy. Why should I? So I don't get why some people hear the word blog and sneer /laugh/ rant.

4) Why, when people are in the wrong, do they get all defensive, sometimes aggressive? Why don't they just shrug their shoulders and admit to being wrong, or apologise, or whatever is suitable in the circumstances? I get several wrong number calls a day on my mobile for a swingers' club the other side of France. I answer, politely, and tell them they have the wrong number, and that the club has been closed and by misfortune I happen to have inherited the number. About half the people apologise, and hang up. I'm sorry, I got the wrong number, bye. Which is what you'd expect. The other half get defensive - well this is the number on their site, do you have their new number? Why don't you have their new number? Several just slam the phone down. Some call right back, and try again, and we have the same but slightly more fraught conversation. And these are just the calls I pick up. I switch it off at night because people thought it was OK to call after midnight and not apologise when they realised they had made a mistake.

5) I don't get the current obsession on TV with giving birth. One Born Every Minute, Call the Midwife, Midwives. Everyone I know on Facebook seems to talk about them. A lot. I just gave birth last year. And the year before that. Why would I want to watch someone else do it? Why would someone allow themselves to be filmed giving birth? And why do so many of the partners seems like such useless wastes of space? I don't buy into the giving birth is beautiful thing. We would all love to breathe a baby out to the sound of wind chimes and hardly a graze but that isn't reality. Reality, for most of us, is a mostly unpleasant experience. So why watch others go through it for any reason other than educational reasons for teenage girls? You might be interested to know that similar fly on the wall documentaries in France are much quieter. Almost everyone has an epidural, far less dramatic, but far more pleasant to watch. And Call The Midwife is OK, but with so much fly on the wall crap buzzing round it feels like overkill.

So, those are just some of the things I don't get right now. There are lots more. But that is what comes to mind today.