PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
WAR, as we know, is the most highly organised form of boredom, and it is inevitable that with all this hanging about the tempers of men and women should become a trifle frayed. Each of us by now has discovered his own peculiar speciality in irritation. Some people mind the black-out unduly, and their faces, as they push through the curtains which screen their club entrances, are purple with rage: Others concentrate upon train services, and in the train from Manchester the other day I met a man who was most indignant on the subject of dining-cars. Others, again, are so incensed by the Ministry of Information that they cannot open a newspaper without starting to splutter and fume. My own speciality in irritation is spy-mania. When people talk to me about spies I long to box their ears.
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