How to make friends and influence people

I had a number of ideas of what I was going to blog about today - things I have misheard or misread, why I hate being me #1 (migraines), strange dreams I have had and a selection of other options. But instead, I'm going to list a number of things which I have been known to do which I suspect irritate/offend/annoy people.

Many of these are really Americanisms, which is fine when they are used by Americans, I don't have a problem with that. I am not an American and should know better.

1. Say "can I get" instead of "could I have". This REALLY annoys my dad, but hey, he let me watch all those American sitcoms.

2. Australian question inflex - where you say something and raise your voice at the end of the sentence so it sounds quite irritating. This is really lazy sentence construction, if you want to ask something, formulate a question.

3. Referring to things I don't like as "gay". I love gays, me, and in no way mean to suggest that to be gay is a bad thing. And I know lots of people do it. But it doesn't make it any better.

4. I pronounce wander and wonder in exactly the same way. As far as I'm concerned, this is correct. But one of my mates pointed it out and said it drove him mad and that wonder should be pronounced "wunder" not "oneder" as I was saying it. The thing is, why? I mean, you're hardly going to use them in a context where it could be confusing?

"I wonder where he's wandered off to." See? Not confusing.

5. Remove all the hair from my hairbrush and be a bit careless about where it ends up. HF said if he could change one thing about me, it would be the way I leave hair everywhere. That said, he would really hate it if I got it cut. You can't have the best of both worlds, sonny Jim.

6. I say tikka, not teekka and pronounce cumin come-in not qumin. Which are apparently wrong and go some way to irritating my best friend (she's a bit posher than I am).

7. I trumpet quite loudly and reliably every morning. But only HF hears it, it doesn't smell and to be honest, he usually responds with the trombone.

8. I haven't done this one in a long time. But when I was younger, on occasion when I was very drunk, I used to ask my friends or boyfriends to slap me round the face to help me snap out of it. I'm pretty sure that no-one ever agreed to do it.

9. When someone starts talking about a subject which bores me, I tend to switch off. But you can never tell for sure, because I have an excellent memory so can recite back the last few things the person said if stopped just as if I was listening all along. A few people have caught on to this (namely HF) but unfortunately it hasn't stopped him talking about Lincoln City Football Club aka the imps. Please, if anyone hear likes the team, befriend him so he can talk to someone else about it.

10. I can't think of another one. But I'm sure I've demonstrated dozens of irritating habits over the last few months, so feel free to chime in and add any. I should warn you, if it's really mean I might get all upset.

I may get round to one of the other posts at some point.

More on that story later.