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It’s surprising how quickly a chap with two hats and snow visible through a window gets out of date, isn’t it?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a post-solar storm apocalypse where there ARE NO CAPPUCCINOS, Formula 1, Those honkers the Canada Geese (that went out of date fast, didn’t it?), quarries closing and my meteoric rise to Chairman of the Allotment Association.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.)

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...

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