How to... annoy yourself

People who say they don't regret anything in life clearly aren't leading the same lives as normal people. For example, who hasn't cringed for a good hour after accidentally saying "toodle-pip" at the end of an important phone call.

You can also annoy yourself by deciding to answer the phone during dinner, picking it up as soon as it rings and then getting locked into the world's longest conversation while your cauliflower cheese turns to cold muck.

Annoying yourself comes from a temporary loss of self-control. When you're going to a party, you put on an outfit you know looks rubbish. You check in the mirror, and the mirror says it's rubbish. You check with your partner, who says it's wonderful, so you know it's rubbish but you still go out in it. You spend the whole night looking and feeling rubbish, and no amount of alcohol will quench the fires of self-annoyance.

You can order the wrong thing in the restaurant. You know what you really like, but you insist on having something else just to be different. Then you spend the evening watching your partner wolf down your favourite while you nudge a beetroot cake around your plate.

In the supermarket, you can really upset yourself by deliberately and carefully managing to choose the longest, slowest queue. This, of course, is as nothing compared to when they've scanned in 400 tonnes of shopping and you realise your purse is on the sideboard at home.

Most people try to stop unnecessary bitching some time in their mid-20s. But then you say something fantastically witty and cutting that you immediately regret because you know it will get back to them quicker than a twang on their knicker elastic. Everybody has something that gives them a quick fill-up of self-loathing. Watching gardening programmes for the sexual content is a prime example. Or playing a computer game for 12 hours continuously during which you miss the arrival of your first-born is another.

People who say they haven't regretted anything in life either have massive self-discipline and never get anything wrong, or are massively self-satisfied and think they never get anything wrong. They may not annoy themselves, but they sure as hell annoy other people.