I yank my sister's chain with this phenomenon. Our dad died about eleven years ago. When I'm with her I will use one of his inimitable turns of phrase, or come out with one of his distinctive racist or otherwise extreme wayout opinions. My sister promptly bursts into tears.

Catch yerself on, son



Mine's more that I share his tendency to not use five words when five hundred will do, and to carry on for a good ten minutes after my point has been made ...

Yeah tell us about it.

Abbreviations that only save a letter or two...

Abbreviations that are actually longer than the word...

Drying machine that has the annoying siren sound to say it has finished...yet continues to go on for another 20 or so mins before actually finishing the dry load.

Milk jugs with the flip on caps rather than the screw tops...what was the point? Those things are shit and always make a mess.

Milk that goes off before the use by date....when there is loads of milk still left.

Milk in the US, vs. the UK, is (a) poor quality (b) expensive (c) sold in too-large containers. I also have to tip it down the sink regularly.. I buy a litre (what do they call it here..? a "quart??") every week to use in my tea, it has gone off after about six days even though when I buy it it usually has a date about two weeks ahead. It costs $1.29. In Tesco I could buy a pint for 55p. Since I need a pint or less, Tesco would be a better deal.

I keep promising myself that I will keep the grocery store receipt and take the milk back; but never do.

Indeed...but it's too smelly that I just chuck it.

Did take a 3/4 finished jug of OJ back to BJ's the other day, when a huge chunk of rubber came pouring out of the jug into the glass....proper nasty that was.

What's with all the flaky white stuff that gathers around the top of the milk bottle/carton?

It's the little gremlins who poo in the milk, which is why it goes off so quickly me thinks...

You're a nutter.

To be absolutely fair, though, however bad milk in America is, it is better than the third of a pint bottle that we were forced to drink at morning break in primary school after it had been sitting out in the sun for a couple of hours.

And I particularly like the milk here that has that extra whiteness!!

On the peeve side though - Adverts...

It's bad enough to have an ad break every 42.5 nanoseconds...

It's bad enough the quality of 99.9999999999% of all ads is sh*t...

But to cut in to an ad with another ad after 10 seconds, or just before the end where they give out the important info...

... that's just ineptness of the largest kind - camouflaged to look like savvy business practice - whoever is responsible for this... w*nking arseholes

Don't bother - the store will likely tell you the milk was stored at an improper temperature, or it got too warm between store & home......or something that was you're fault. Living in the south, sometimes in intolerable heat, we now take coolers with us when we go shopping to lessen the likelihood of having to pour out spoiled milk before the so-called "expiration date"! Still happens, and it is not because we didn't keep it cold enough!

Lyonsden1193 worked for a dairy before he came here - he's absolutely appalled at the quality of our milk and won't drink it unless it has chocolate in it. I drink a LOT of milk, and am particular (American style) about it's "freshness".

I'm the only one who drinks milk, and only in tea.. so I really need about half-a-pint a week. Problem is, tea has a delicate flavour so it tastes no good as soon as the milk is past its best. For cooking, though, the milk would be fine for another week. Being lazy bastards, we hardly ever cook.