Looking at your phone and sniggering
Stopping mid-conversation to look at a text is annoying enough. To then deliver a sinister, secret laugh is infuriating. Drive everyone mad with your annoying unexplained chortling. Don’t share the joke.
Wearing bright red lipstick in the day
Hello. This is my mouth. Does it scare you a bit? In an arousing kind of way? Why don’t you stare at it and think about what it would be like to kiss it and stuff? I’ll just sit here and talk about spreadsheets or Brexit or something while you experience a host of erratic emotions.
Driving with very loud music
It’s old school, but it still works. Will you be a bit slutty with Prince? A bit moody with the Rolling Stones? Nice and middle class with Coldplay? It barely matters – just as long as passers by are staring at you. Even if they’re thinking, ‘Wanker’.
Creating some vegan confusion
Vegans are everywhere. They’re behind your bathroom door. Under your bed. They’re hiding in the fridge, tutting over your butter. They don’t like it when you order a cheeseburger. Sshhh, there’s one looking at you now. DON’T MOVE. Go to restaurants and ask for ‘vegan water’. “Sorry, but are these napkins vegan?” “Please ask the chef not to use any pepper on my steak unless it’s vegan pepper.”
Wearing big wireless headphones
You know the kind – the ones that have no visible microphone so you just look like a nutter who talks to herself. Especially good on the overground. In a carriage where no one is talking.
Repeatedly touching your eye
Is there a tiny tear forming in the corner of your eye because of something mysteriously troubling you? Is it just an eyelash? A contact lens? A deeply painful memory? A deeply happy memory? ARRRGH, WHAT IS IT??? That’s right, keep guessing, bitches.
Staring into the middle distance
This is a good one for meetings. Perhaps you are thinking about how to exceed your targets for the next quarter. Perhaps you are trying to remember everyone who has won X Factor since 2004. Perhaps you are having a mini stroke. Perhaps you have finally worked out what happened at the end of Lost. Keep bringing the drama.
Sunglasses indoors
Oh, OK, so you’re Bono now. Either that, or you are recovering from a detached retina operation and are bravely socialising again at great risk to your sight/you have been crying all afternoon and look like a rabbit with myxomatosis/are profoundly hungover. Explain nothing.
