grumpyf1

2013. It was quite, year-y, wasn’t it? Now that it’s about to breathe it’s last before a squawking, fresh-faced 2014 shows up, I thought a spot of in-depth news analysis might be in order. Sadly, it rapidly became apparent that I’m definitely not the right man for that job – you’ve seen my previous columns, right? Precisely. So, whilst you gamely attempt to polish off your third carton of Quality Street since Christmas day, and Gran slips slowly into a port-fuelled dream world where Michael Ball is always number 1, here’s my view on some of the year’s more baffling (for me, at least) news stories. January : An ex pub landlord from West Yorkshire becomes the first person in the UK to receive a hand transplant. I’m sure that was dead handy. Literally. At least now he can stick two fingers up at Lancashire. February : The UK loses it’s AAA rating. Me too - Funny how you never seem to have the right size of battery when you need some, isn’t it? March : 62 people are arrested

Ho ho ho! As there are just a few days left until Santa’s Birthday, I decided this column should eschew its usual grumpiness, and be purely joyful. I know - Brace yourself. Well now, this shouldn’t be too tricky, eh? There’s so much to be thankful for at this time of year! I just bet you’re all looking forward to spending lots of extra time with family that you don’t see the rest of the year – especially the in-laws, eh? That’ll be super! And won’t it be great to spend lots of time in the kitchen? What a great chance to learn how to cook things you don’t normally have to contend with, in very large quantities. That kind of opportunity only comes at this time of year. Plus, you get to have distant members of the clan that you barely know give you their very direct review of your efforts. What an opportunity to learn from the experts – it’ll be just like Masterchef. There’s still time to hear more of those Christmas classics in all the shops you visit before the big day too.

After last week’s storm, I went for my regular walk at the weekend, and wound up going on a melancholy journey of self analysis along the battered Cumbrian coast. Saturday saw the anniversary of our move to Cumbria, on a wet and windy day 7 years ago. Weather-wise, it sometimes feels that things haven’t changed much during that time, but the storm last week battered the coastline of my village of Arnside, depositing tons of rubbish onto the pavements, roads and coastline wherever they happened to be close to the boiling tide. For the last few years, I’ve made a weekend habit of clambering up Arnside Knott, heading over to Far Arnside (I wave in the general direction of the NWEM’s HQ from the top, honestly) and walking back home along the coast. I’m easy to spot at the top of the Knott – I’m the one that looks and sounds like an asthmatic lobster. I’ve done the walk in a variety of challenging weather conditions from freezing rain and lethal icy surfaces, to sunshine so pleasant

Golly - who'd have thunked it. This blog has now reached the ripe old age of 4. It seems much longer since I first thought I'd have a stab at adding my voice to the billions of others being ignored on the interweb, but here I am - still shouting pointlessly into the void. My blogging habbits seem to have changed quite dramatically during the years too; Where I once dipped in randomly, and blogged about a variety of topics (but largely F1) in small, ranty, bursts, now the blog reflects the longer postings that appear in my newspaper column. Were it not for this blog, I wouldn't have considered entering the Big Blogger contest that led to my glorious not-quite-winning and subsequent getting-a-column-but-without-a-prize. The F1 content may have lessened dramatically, but I think the depth of the writing has improved, and I'm sure I'm a better writerist for it. But then again, I'm still shouting down a wire with squillions of others, without the slighte

Once upon a time, you decided you wanted something, went to a shop, and purchased it. Soon it might be delivered by unmanned stealth aircraft. When Tim Berners-Lee got fed up with TVs not being interactive enough, he decided to hook them up to some phone wire, attach the gubbins out of a couple of digital watches, took a few visual clues from Teletext, and the next thing you know, you’re watching an entire series of The Sweeney on your tablet from the comfort of your train seat, whilst annoying other passengers. Alternatively, you might be complaining vociferously on facebook about what an absolute chore it is doing the Christmas shopping, when you have had to look at literally several websites, before adding something to your basket and clicking ‘buy’. One the biggest companies to rub its hands in glee at all of our online shopping is Amazon who, despite some questionable ethics regarding tax (non) payments, and a documentary singling them out as particularly unpleasant clock-

A recent discovery, of previously unseen family photos from 1973, had me fondly remembering the good old days. Until I thought about it a bit more. After my Mum died, we had the sad task of disposing of the contents of the house me and my brothers had grown up in. I wound up with several boxes of odds and ends, which I put in a cupboard, and hadn’t plucked up the courage to look at for nearly a decade. When I recently opened one, I discovered a vintage slide viewer (you could tell it was old – it was actually made in England and it didn’t work properly) and a box of slides. To my surprise and delight, there were photos of me and my younger brother when we were small that I hadn’t seen before. To give that some context, whilst some families were filming each other with Super 8 cameras, or reeling off endless rolls of film, photographic evidence proving that I haven’t always been old, hairy and tired is scarcer than rocking horse poo. I sent them off to a company I found on

Blimey. I've just noticed that this blog has recently passed the 40,000 views mark. When I actually start to think about that, it's genuinely quite startling. I still can't believe that anyone is actually coming here to read my random outpourings on purpose, but just in case you haven't landed here entirely by chance, or because Google bunged you in my direction due to a a tag, hello and thank you. You're clearly a very nice person.