grumpyf1

GBBOpocalypse, by the brilliant @jimllpaintit In case you’ve been asleep since 2009, there’s this rather successful baking TV show and everyone’s really upset about it changing channels. Confused? I can help... BBC1’s monstrously successful baking-in-a-tent-with-double-entendres competition, The Great British Bake Off (or GBBO as it’s legion of oven-obsessed fans call it) has been hitting the headlines recently. Currently mid-way through it’s seventh series for The Beeb, devotees have tears running down their baps following the announcement that it’s producers are selling it to Channel 4 after a reputed £75m deal was baked-up. That’s a lot of dough, and presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins have sensationally decided not to follow the money, along with judge Mary Berry. Her fellow judge, Paul Hollywood, announced on Thursday that he was switching channels, but the icing on the cake for this story could yet be that Channel 4 have basically pastry-forked out for a large, empt

Adverts - you can’t escape them. How can you avoid the seemingly endless overload of selling? Fear not, for help is at hand... or should that be paw? We live in a pressurised world, where messages imploring you to try, buy, be cooler, fitter, smarter, trendier, cleaner, happier, calmer and a million other things are full-on and in your face, 24/7. From the moment you pick up your phone in the morning, via the radio, TV, your tablet, laptop, desktop, in the newspapers and magazine, on billboards you pass, inside the trains and buses you ride, someone is trying to sell you something. If only there was some kind of temporary respite. A way to feel, even briefly, less pressurised by the constant messages imploring you to consume. Maybe even something to make you feel a bit happier and calm, in amongst the maelstrom of shiny things parading constantly in from of your tired eyes. Perhaps it could involve cats. Cats are nice, right? If the internet has taught me anything (other than

A tricky dilemma for me this week: I’m British so I should enjoy queuing, but it turns out I really, really, don’t. Especially when it should be easily preventable. Compared to some, I have a sweet commute. I leave my pretty village, drive through lovely countryside with views of mountains, skirt around England’s largest lake, then arrive at work, 25 miles later, on the edge of Ambleside. I could be on the M25. Or Basingstoke. Or somewhere in a tube train, hurtling along below ground pressed against a sweaty guy with an annoying cough who bathes in garlic oil. Sure, there are some occasional annoyances; tourists in 4x4s who seem terrified that there’s a dry stone wall close to their car; Rivers and lakes that sometimes get over-keen and try to muscle in on the roads; Idiots in Audis (I don’t need to qualify that one, do I?). But there is one irritation that outstrips all others and I encountered the latest incarnation of it this week, when a set of temporary traffic lights a

If you ever look back fondly on days gone by, remember this – there was no internet. The past, therefore, sucks big time. Back in June, I penned a column for your edification in which I contemplated the merits of a digital detox, and spending some time offline and away from screens of various sizes. Weak-willed techno-ponce that I am, I didn’t. The cruel hand of fate (or BT, as they’re also known) intervened last weekend, skilfully converting a non-existent phone connection into a full-blown broadband outage simply by sending an engineer to our house. Cut adrift without the internet piped into our home at high velocity, our coastal location and thick walls also means we have no mobile signal either. Bad enough that this occurred over a Bank Holiday weekend, but we also had a couple of days off work too to supersize our time at home. v The horror of being ‘outernet’ struck quickly. We had to go for a walk to be able to report the broadband fault. “Can you give us an alternative

Dark days in the Grenville household – our trusty washing machine has gone for the great spin-cycle in the sky. I’ll miss “Washy”. She managed three house moves and a considerable amount of her life without the curved plastic screen on the front, after a careless handyman broke it. But she soldiered on regardless. True, in her later years she did get quite temperamental. Prone to screeching suddenly, rocking violently from side to side and the timer sounding like it was possessed by the spirit of Ringo Starr, we’d known this day would come since around Christmas. Returning home after a medicinal cappuccino last weekend, we discovered Washy refusing to give up her load of towels and pillow cases, instead keeping them safe in a very hot bath of soapy water. Eventually, we had to prize her door off. I’m not sure who was more hurt. Banished to the back yard, she’s currently glaring at us from under a tarpaulin, wondering why she’s been abandoned. I suspect she never really forgav