grumpyf1

Nice cheery song about... war... Today’s the day! The Christmas number 1 is announced! Will it be Ed Sheeran? The answer to that is – almost certainly, yes. Apart from his own single, he’s up against veteran purveyor of rap, Eminem. Who just happens to be joined on his song by... Ed Sheeran. True, there are a couple of possible late disruptors, but it looks like we’ll be having a ginger Christmas, and neither of the songs vying for the top spot are even of a Christmassy nature. If you’re counting Christmas No.1’s as having to actually mention Christmas, then Ed, and Ed and Em, are not alone in being discounted – Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2”, whilst brilliant, is also one of the most miserable songs to try and have a jolly time too over the festive season. And it was 1979 too. Double depressing whammy. Sing along, Grandma! “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control...” The biggest worldwide seller is Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”, wh

Let the Saturday morning good times roll! December 2016, and January of this year, were bleak times for those of a certain age, with the passing of TV, film and music stars that meant an awful lot to an awful lot of people. I’m hoping that 2017 isn’t about to follow a similar pattern. The brilliant musician Chris Rea had a near miss, collapsing on stage recently – fingers crossed for him that he’ll still be Driving Home For Christmas... or at least getting a lift. This was followed, all too quickly, by the news that TV presenter Keith Chegwin had died, at the age of 60. “Cheggers” was the ever-exuberant member of the line-up that presented Multi-Coloured Swap Shop on BBC1 on a Saturday morning. In the late 70s and early 80s, there wasn’t exactly an overload of TV for kids, so the arrival of the lengthy extravaganza of music, entertainment, interviews and fun was essential viewing for scruffy oiks like myself, even if it did mean having to get up and make sure I’d had breakfas

Fancy an investment? A toilet-related problem at work has given me a brilliant idea for an app... The current lack of conveniences available for use in our offices is, well – inconvenient. Due to some underground pump-relating thingies failing (I’m very technically-minded, as you can see) we currently have to walk to different buildings several minutes away to spend pennies. Or other amounts of coinage. We have options, which means I’ve visited a fair few lavatories I’ve never been to before. Some were good, some were bad. Some had very good things, but were let down in other ways. Sharing my in-depth report on my visits with strangely underwhelmed colleagues, I realised there was a money-making opportunity here – a loo rating app for you phone. Why go through the misery of not knowing if a toilet is going to be nice, when you can open your phone and let the app show you ratings for your nearest available bogs? I had come up with a name, based on the popular “TripAdvisor”, but

Nope. No idea. Is that Ed Sheeran? So, you’ve successfully set up home beneath a rock. Congratulations. You therefore haven’t heard anything at all about the forthcoming royal wedding. For the rest of us, it’s been a pretty relentless week of news about Harry getting hitched. Mis-hearing it, I initially thought the 5th in line to the throne was preparing to marry Angela Merkel, which was somewhat surprising, as she’s already married (for starters). But no, the bearded Prince is preparing to say “I jolly well do” to American actress, Meghan Markle. Just to put the icing on the wedding-cake of news overload that ensued following the announcement, the BBC website even has a running stream of updates featuring both actual news and fascinating insights and opinions on the hottest topic of the week. In hindsight, I should have used some inverted commas around two of those items: ‘News’ is somewhat pushing it, when it’s basically the same bits of information endlessly re-played in s

A Renault Kadjar (Weaponry is an optional extra) A while ago, one of those letters dropped through my letterbox that really helps to instil a sense of trust between you and your car manufacturer. In this instance the letter was from Renault, maker of my humble Twingo. The missive was a safety recall. Apparently, the bonnet and rear wing (if you’re thinking Formula 1 technology, you’re sorely mistaken) had potentially not been bonded correctly. Right – that’s probably not good is it? And they may fall apart whilst you’re driving, putting yourself and other road users at risk. Seriously not good, then. So a few weeks later, during which nothing detached itself in a dangerous fashion from my car, I rolled up at the garage to have my tiny chariot glued back together. Properly. Not with a Pritt Stick or whatever they used first time around. On presenting myself to the service receptionist, she cheerfully told me my courtesy car was just outside - “The black one”. I could see a s

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat

Lewis and his jet. (VAT not pictured.) Mired in an unpleasant and seedy world of harassment accusations and casting couch impropriety, some of the rich and famous elite needed something to take them off the front pages. Lo and behold it happened this week, but only by turning a spotlight on some of the rich and famous elite’s financial sleight-of-hand and unscrupulous practices. The leaking this week of a veritable mother-load of financial document relating to everyone from senior royals to the stars of Mrs Brown’s Boys (as if they hadn’t already done enough bad things) provided some entertainment, for me at least. People with oodles of money being made to feel bad about their dodgy tax-avoidance shenanigans? Grand. Unfortunately, they’ve still got lots of dosh in the bank (wherever it may be), so I doubt they’re too traumatised. We have a notoriously short attention span nowadays, so we will probably have forgotten all about... the thing... sorry, what were we talking abou

It’s been an interesting week of experiences, good and bad... but some of them less obviously one or the other. Allow me to explain. First of all, there’s an obvious one which was not only good, but simply joyous. Whilst dropping Mrs G off at the station early one morning, a tiny wren landed on the wing mirror of our car, sat motionless for a few moments, then flitted away. Wonderful. By the same logic, seeing someone damage their car five minutes later at the petrol station should be categorised as bad. However, this was a souped-up VW, with tinted windows, ridiculous spoiler, massive shiny chrome exhaust tailpipe and a spiky haired surly lad behind the wheel, who pulled into a parking space as I was leaving the shop. Unfortunately for the young driver (and presumably his ego), he apparently forgot the ground-skimmingly low front spoiler as he pulled up to the kerb. A kerb that was several inches higher. The loud bang/crunch noise was a delight. I believe the Germans have a wo

"£4billion for cash, mate?" I had a plasterer and electrician round this week. The work they did cost me getting on for £570. Add another seven zeroes to that, and you’ll reach 5.7billion quid – the possible cost of repairing the crumbling Houses of Parliament. The nursery rhyme got it wrong – it’s not London Bridge that’s falling down, it’s London’s parliamentary home. After 150 years of literally plastering over the cracks and carrying out running repairs, the Grade 1 listed building is at risk of sinking, falling to bits, catching fire or an exciting combination of all three at the same time, thanks to outdated cabling, a sewage system straight out of an engineering museum, and an extra large helping of chronic indecision. Despite a report five years ago warning that damage may be major and irreversible, MPs are still having a good old think about it, and unlikely to come up with an answer for another year and a half. Politicians putting off a decision that mig

Lovely day in Cumbria... To make optimal use of the word ‘understatement’ - it’s been an interesting couple of weeks weather-wise, hasn’t it? Last week featured rain that would have seen Noah reaching for his saw and nails, whilst glancing nervously at the sky and wondering what the giraffes were up to. Where I work, on the edge of Ambleside, the river Brathay filled up rapidly enough that it was actually higher than the road. Unfortunately, this being Cumbria, it was being held back by a dry stone wall, so the river was squirting out through the gaps between the stones and filling up the road. True, it wasn’t all bad. Someone in a ’17-plate Mercedes obviously presumed their car must be amphibious, and had attempted to drive through the deepening flood. When you pay that much for a car, I guess you just expect it to come with an automatic ‘boat’ mode. Still, I’m sure their carpets will dry out eventually. And their shoes and trousers. My journey home (as I’m sure many of your

Back when it began: Untidy, excessive undergrowth and in bad shape -and the allotment was pretty bad too. The dream is over. This week we relinquished tenancy of our allotment plot. Nearly eight years have passed since we took it on. Back then, the decade had only just started, bank notes were made of paper and I didn’t need a hat on a sunny day quite as much as I do nowadays. We were thrilled to bag our large plot. OK, it was waist-deep in weeds, but we had high hopes, untapped energy and boundless optimism. We would turn this patch of green stuff into a fruit and veg-based paradise. It would become an oasis of tranquil productivity. A sanctuary of bountiful (and edible) goodness. My first ever encounter with a slow worm, whist hacking at the undergrowth with shears, did involve me believing I’d stumbled upon a highly venomous snake (the screaming and running away wasn’t my finest moment). A little research revealed my wriggly chum was, in fact, a kind of leg-free lizard and

Last year was rightly heralded as being a bad one for the music world, with numerous stars leaving us too soon. The chameleonic-genius that was David Bowie. The hugely talented, diminutive, star with just the one name – Prince. 80s pop-God with the amazing vocal range, George Michael. Each were individuals I admired and appreciated for their raw talent, their influence on others, and their contributions to my listening pleasure through the 1970s, ‘80s, and beyond. But the news this week that American rocker Tom Petty had died, as the age of 66, hit me harder than Bowie, Prince or Michael, or any of the other talented musicians and singers we’ve lost in recent times. Unless you count briefly landing there on the way to a holiday in Mexico, I’ve never been to the USA. I’m not specifically a fan of American music, but something about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ songs struck a chord with me. At a point in my life when I couldn’t have been more into music unless I lived ins

Today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s chip paper. Wholly unhygienic, obviously, but you definitely can’t eat your greasy fried spuds off a website. The problem is, the printed paper used to be a main source of news. Now, with the instant convenience of the internet and 24-hour rolling reports, the poor old printed format often seems hopelessly out of date by the time you unfold it. Significantly, even if you’re willing to accept a notable time-delay by modern standards, why would you want to pay for something you can get free on the world wide web? For national papers, the draw of expert journalism, in-depth analysis and insight can still win over readers who yearn for more than the instant short-form gratification of website articles. For local papers, it’s that local – even hyper-local – news, which the regional sections of larger news organisations simply can’t keep up with. This isn’t about what’s happening in your ‘region’, it might not even be enough that it’s about your to

"Sorry, can't stop - busy saving the planet." I love the smell of petrol and hypocrisy in the morning. As a fan of the fast-moving circus that is Formula 1, I’m used to people pointing out that there’s nothing exciting about some over-paid guys driving round in circles for two hours. I’ve also become accustomed to being preached at about all that flying around the world and petrol-guzzling engines being terrible environmentally. Shame on me for supporting it, etc. One of F1’s biggest stars, Lewis Hamilton, has certainly made my life a little harder when one of those conversations kicks off next. He’s told the BBC in an interview that he’s going to adopt a vegan diet, for health reasons and because he’s worried about emissions... from cows. When he points out that pollution from the back end of our bovine chums is “more than what we produce with our flights and cars” he’s actually pretty much bang on. Our love of beefy stuff and the unfortunate by-product of guff

If you paid someone to make you a wedding cake, and they took your money but delivered it two weeks after the wedding, you’d be pretty annoyed. If, after that marriage failed dismally because your partner just couldn’t forgive you for the cake debacle, you were getting married again and the cake showed up 4 weeks late, you’d be livid (and possibly wondering why you decided to go back to the same cake creator after the first incident). Whilst not quite as ruinous to my relationship – I’m pretty OK at that without outside assistance – my energy supplier is pulling a similar stunt. I won’t give away their name, but they supply Gas, and they’re British. Anyway, living in a draughty old house whose windows were installed immediately after glass had been invented, I really need to know that my boiler will be in tip top shape, and there for me when I really need it. To help with this, I have one of those monthly payment insurance schemes, with rapid emergency call out should somethi

Singing megastar Taylor Swift doesn’t like ticket touts. But she loves her fans. If only there was a way to put the two things together and just make everything all lovely. Luckily for her, her chums at ticketing agency Ticketmaster in the US have helped her come up with a smashing idea that foils the touts (boo!) and rewards the fans (hurrah!). No-one wants those nasty ticket touts buying up all the scrummy tickets for her gigs and depriving her adoring “Swifties” of their chance to see their heroine in all her shiny live splendour. So they’ve come up with the idea of letting her fans improve their chance of getting a ticket by letting them earn “boosts”. These could be for things they’re already doing, such as downloading Taylor’s albums, watching her videos on youtube, posting selfies, and buying merchandise. The touts won’t be doing that, so the people who deserve to get tickets are higher up the queue and access a ticket pre-sale. So far, so sparkly. But hang on a mome

What to do on a Bank Holiday, we wondered? Anywhere in the Lakes would be heaving with tourists gawping at the views and parking badly. So we decided to go to Edinburgh. True, we failed to spot that it was the Fringe Festival, but who doesn’t like a nice, big, crowd? They also seem to be knocking down a chunk of the city, but never mind – it’s big. There are plenty of other un-demolished bits to enjoy, presuming you can get near them amongst all the other people. Whilst the south of the country basked in temperatures pushing 30C, the over- crowded bit of Scotland was a moderate 18C, with a breeze sufficiently strong that what’s left of my hair took on a ruffled look. We’d travelled up early for our day of intellectual shop-browsing and cappuccino consumption, letting the train take the strain, and had even spotted an interesting bridge from our luxurious carriage. Some web-browsing subsequently revealed it to be the just-about-to-open Queensferry Crossing. Bonus – we’d already

BONG! Oh, right - sorry. For whom the bell tolls? Well, it’s definitely not me or thee, or anyone else wanting to hear the sonorous chiming of London’s Big Ben, counting the hours away. At least, not for the next 4 years. The iconic bongs will be absent until 2021, as the 13.7-tonne Great Bell gets a spruce-up along with the Great Clock that makes it all happen, and their instantly recognisable home, the Elizabeth Tower. Health and Safety is the main reason for the chime-drought, as the need to protect workers’ hearing will be behind the longest quiet spell in the clock’s 157 year history. It won’t be total silence though – the bell will ring out on special occasions, such as Remembrance Sunday and New Year’s Eve. I’m presuming there will be a shed-load of AA batteries on standby for those occasions, just in case they haven’t had time to put it all back together temporarily and wind it up. So far, so quiet. It needs an overhaul, and no-one has invented ridiculously efficient

Quick! More cushions! I’ve recently spent a couple of nights in a hotel. Obviously, it was awful. Not calamitously bad or anything, just irritatingly not quite right. Once the fundamentals had been dealt with, like; ‘Is it clean?’, ‘Are there spiders?’ and ‘Are you sure there aren’t any spiders?’ the experience was a journey into crushing disappointment and frustrated inconvenience. The plug sockets were apparently deliberately installed by a maniacal electrician with a degree in evil. They knew how to place them precisely in entirely the right place to render them either inaccessible or useless. Could I plug my phone in by the bed and use it as a clock so I could see exactly what time it was when I was awoken by another guest noisily using their loo? No. Any future visits to waterfalls will remind me of the horror. The gap under the room’s door was so wide, even a moderately competent limbo dancer would have had no problem squeezing underneath. We had to line up the copiou

Charming... I had a really weird dream the other night. There were sentient, singing, cakes vomiting and being sliced up. Truly Nightmarish. Alarmingly, it turned out to be real, and manifested itself in the form of a trailer for Channel 4’s take-over of “nice buns” TV show The Great British Bake Off, which will be appearing on our screens again soon, apparently. Whilst the show itself features only one star from it’s time on the BBC, in the form of judge Paul Hollywood, the presence of some new big names would have seemingly provided the channel with an opportunity to fanfare their exciting line-up with aplomb. Instead of Prue Leith, Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding gracing our screens with an amuse bouche of the forthcoming show’s sweet and savoury delights, we were instead force fed a one minute, stop motion/speeded up/animated baking freak show. Amongst the doughy plaits, smiling cakes and gigantically-hipped bread people rising in a oven, a parade of weird floury visio

Yes, I’ll admit it took me a long time to come up with that Bohemian Rhapsody-based headline, following two stories vying for my attention this week. First up, we have the latest victim in the greatest/strangest reality show on the planet, hosted by that zany guy with the overly-long tie, Donald “You’re Fired!” Trump. Maybe we could call it White House Big Bother? Since getting himself comfy in the Oval Office’s chair, the President has been busily increasing the unemployment level of the USofA by firing people so quickly, some of them probably hadn’t even had sufficient time to being their own mug in and figure out how many sugars everyone else had. I bet there’s hardly a day goes by without another “Sorry you’re leaving” card doing the rounds. Acting attorney general, Sally Yates, managed 10 days of employment before getting the boot – I’ve had colds that lasted longer than that. Michael Flynn was, briefly, national security adviser for a mammoth 23 days – a timeframe shor