I'm in your hands. Ew!

By the Almighty Goddess Sonia (Better The Devil You Know) – I’m in the ‘Blog Off’! I am therefore, once and for all, completely in your hands. This is a worry, but I do have a catering-sized bottle of that hand sanitizer stuff, and a box of baby wipes.

It’s surprising how quickly a chap with two hats and snow visible through a window gets out of date, isn’t it? To be fair though, I made the quite logical assumption that I’d be out of this competition by February at the latest, but no! Here we are in April, and it’s down to the last two. And one of them, scarily, is me. Still, this is Cumbria, so additional snowfall isn’t out of the question. I could look vaguely relevant again as fast as you can say “Ooo – that cloud looks dark, doesn’t it?”.

Best wishes to my fellow departed Big Bloggerers, a couple of whom I now have the pleasure of knowing through twitter also, and good luck to Darren. Having chatted via That Twitter Thing, it seems we have quite a lot in common, not least of which is a fondness for orchestral-based rock bands fronted by Jeff Lynne. And a complete failure to understand what the rules of this game actually are.

It’s been a fascinating journey. I’ve discussed* lazy recyclers, snow obsessives, the horror of wind chimes, inappropriate use of fog lights, TOTP 1977, vehicles that shouldn’t be allowed on MY roads, the drought in the South, TV journalists and their odd habit of standing outside closed buildings for no discernible reason, idiot drivers, the joys of train travel, the rather amusing thought of me doing actual exercise, death (the two are next to each other in this list for a reason), glimpsed a post-solar storm apocalypse where there ARE NO CAPPUCCINOS, Formula 1, Those honkers the Canada Geese (that went out of date fast, didn’t it?), quarries closing and my meteoric rise to Chairman of the Allotment Association.

(*When I say discussed, I actually mean grumbled rather pathetically.)

You have generously written some very nice things indeed in the comments of these worrying, skull-emptying, exercises, and reinforced my belief that you are all very, very nice (but in all probability, not the sort of person you should surprise suddenly).

So. Who am I? Well, the NW Evening Mail did ask us all to write a profile, but to the best of my knowledge, they were never used. So here’s mine:

The artist formerly known as Jenwis Hamilbutton allegedly works for a charitable trust in Ambleside, but most of his colleagues think he's just there to fix the photocopier or something.

Permanently cheery and optimistic, he is a lover of Formula 1, owns a beard, is addicted to cappuccinos and lies 1/4 of the time.

Born a long time ago, in a galaxy reasonably far away (called Croy-Don), he has lived in both Ox and Berk Shires, and for the last five years has resided in Arnside, despite attempts by an angry mob to have him forcibly removed.

There – what more could you possibly need to know about me? Well, how about this – If I win this thing, I get a column in the paper for the rest of the year. Which means I’ll have to think of a LOT more things to have a bijou rantette about. Did I mention the pile of bits of paper on my desk with random things scrawled on them? I could go on for years...

What happens now is up to you. No pressure then, but I have got all your addresses, and I could lower the value of your house just by standing outside in one of my shirts. Think about it – you know it makes sense.

Hug/friendly but manful pat on the back (delete as appropriate),

A very humbled Peter

This blog post appeared yesterday as an entry in the North West Evening Mail's "Big Blogger" competition. Do me a favour - click on this link to view it on their website, please? Thanks to your clicks, I've made it through to the final Blog Off. AAAAARRGGHHHH!!!!!

(Spot of HM Rock - that's Heavy Metal, not Her Majesty - in the form of Evanescence's "Fallen" from 2003. Mighty fine it is too.)

Faking it for real

As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...

Going Underground

The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...

Is it cold? Snow way...

Lunch out? Not unless you want snow balls... I’ve got a confession to make. Lean in a bit, because I’m going to whisper it. Bit more. Did you have curry for tea? OK, good. I’m a weather nerd. There, I said it. When I was growing up, I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a fireman – I wanted to present the weather on the TV. I was lining myself up for a career at the Met Office when, at about 18 years of age, I discovered I was allergic to studying. Anyway, despite a jam-packed and varied career over the subsequent years, I still have a fascination for the world of meteorology. I even have one of those clocks that projects the time and the external temperature onto the ceiling at night, so I can see how cold it is outside whilst lying awake worrying that I might have wasted my life and been more successful with girls if I’d been more into cars than clouds. So far this year, I’ve gazed at a chilly reading of -5C a couple of times, and been grateful for previous sensible ch...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog