Little things that wind Cathy up

After spending three hours yesterday afternoon/evening attending a YinI-organised "Induction day" in Westminster - the highlight of which was actually having enough confidence in my navigational skills to walk back from there to Waterloo on my own (I don't know central London very well and can rarely find anything) - I noticed a number of those little things in life that can really irritate me for no seemingly rational reason at all.

• People, young women in particular, who can't stop playing with their hair when they're attempting to sit still and instead keep running their hands through it, redoing clips and so on. Every thirty seconds. For two hours. Sitting directly in front of me...
• People who insist on walking around with an umbrella up, especially somewhere crowded such as central London, when it's not even drizzling and you can barely feel any rain at all. If it's not raining, you really don't need an umbrella.
• People who are sitting right next to their phone and, when it rings, hover their hand over the receiver until it's rung about two or three times, and then pick it up. (It's generally halfway through a ring, because if the phone was picked up after precisely two rings - or three rings - it would look like they'd been waiting for the phone to ring a few times before picking it up.)

Cathy was not in a bad mood yesterday. Honestly.