I'm a snob

No really, I'll admit it. Freely. I'm a snob and very, very often, I hate people.

Not specific people so much, just the masses. The great unwashed. The sheeple.

See? S-n-o-b!

And there's nothing that brings my snobbishness to the fore such as a morning spent at the Department of Home Affairs.

I'll willing to admit that the venue itself is enough to generate a healthy amount of disdain before you've even looked around at your fellow countrypeople. It's dingy and run-down and oh so grimy. Layers and layers of grime. There's cleaning staff around but this is the grime of accumulated years of too many bodies passing through and spending too much time there. This is the grime of queues and desperation, the grime of bureaucratic balls-ups and boredom.
Let's face it, it's a sad place 'cos no one likes to spend time there. No matter how excited you may be about your international holiday, the 4h queue to get a new passport rather takes the shine off of things. No matter how enamoured with your new baby, standing there with aching boobs and too little sleep to register it's birth is not the fun part of parenthood.
The excitement and thrill of being newly-wed could get a little tarnished as you stand there waiting to apply for a new ID document.

Especially when the wedding was nearly 7 years ago. And now you're 9 months pregnant.

Yup, I'm doing it. I'm going all old-fashioned. I'm taking my husband's name.

But more on that later. Back to being a snob.
So I'm sitting there trying not to actually touch any surfaces (unfortunately my ankles decreed the sitting part non-negotiable), breathing through my nose, stoically ignoring the tubercular cough behind me, and being awe-struck in wonderment at how ugly people can be.
The incredibly bad hair (condition, colour, style), the ill-fitting and ill-considered clothing, the shoes! don't get me started on the shoes, the toenails, the visible greying underwear, the smoker's coughs and smoker's stink, the flab, the body odour, the facial expressions of pinched, dissatisfied ennui (maybe they can smell themselves?). Urgh.
Double urgh.

I'll no doubt feel bad about this rant at some point. I'm secretly a sucker for social justice. But this morning for a while I relished in feeling superior and snobby, and I probably had the worst expression of pinched, dissatisfied disdain of them all as I sat there with my fat ankles and my smug-married demeanour.

Trying to keep my hands clean but happily dirtying my conscious.