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It’s surprising how quickly a chap with two hats and snow visible through a window gets out of date, isn’t it?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a post-solar storm apocalypse where there ARE NO CAPPUCCINOS, Formula 1, Those honkers the Canada Geese (that went out of date fast, didn’t it?), quarries closing and my meteoric rise to Chairman of the Allotment Association.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

Shouting in the social media mirror

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...

A fisful of change at the shops

A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...

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 ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog