grumpyf1

2013. It was quite, year-y, wasn’t it? Now that it’s about to breathe it’s last before a squawking, fresh-faced 2014 shows up, I thought a spot of in-depth news analysis might be in order. Sadly, it rapidly became apparent that I’m definitely not the right man for that job – you’ve seen my previous columns, right? Precisely. So, whilst you gamely attempt to polish off your third carton of Quality Street since Christmas day, and Gran slips slowly into a port-fuelled dream world where Michael Ball is always number 1, here’s my view on some of the year’s more baffling (for me, at least) news stories. January : An ex pub landlord from West Yorkshire becomes the first person in the UK to receive a hand transplant. I’m sure that was dead handy. Literally. At least now he can stick two fingers up at Lancashire. February : The UK loses it’s AAA rating. Me too - Funny how you never seem to have the right size of battery when you need some, isn’t it? March : 62 people are arrested ...

Ho ho ho! As there are just a few days left until Santa’s Birthday, I decided this column should eschew its usual grumpiness, and be purely joyful. I know - Brace yourself. Well now, this shouldn’t be too tricky, eh? There’s so much to be thankful for at this time of year! I just bet you’re all looking forward to spending lots of extra time with family that you don’t see the rest of the year – especially the in-laws, eh? That’ll be super! And won’t it be great to spend lots of time in the kitchen? What a great chance to learn how to cook things you don’t normally have to contend with, in very large quantities. That kind of opportunity only comes at this time of year. Plus, you get to have distant members of the clan that you barely know give you their very direct review of your efforts. What an opportunity to learn from the experts – it’ll be just like Masterchef. There’s still time to hear more of those Christmas classics in all the shops you visit before the big day too....

After last week’s storm, I went for my regular walk at the weekend, and wound up going on a melancholy journey of self analysis along the battered Cumbrian coast. Saturday saw the anniversary of our move to Cumbria, on a wet and windy day 7 years ago. Weather-wise, it sometimes feels that things haven’t changed much during that time, but the storm last week battered the coastline of my village of Arnside, depositing tons of rubbish onto the pavements, roads and coastline wherever they happened to be close to the boiling tide. For the last few years, I’ve made a weekend habit of clambering up Arnside Knott, heading over to Far Arnside (I wave in the general direction of the NWEM’s HQ from the top, honestly) and walking back home along the coast. I’m easy to spot at the top of the Knott – I’m the one that looks and sounds like an asthmatic lobster. I’ve done the walk in a variety of challenging weather conditions from freezing rain and lethal icy surfaces, to sunshine so pleasant...

Golly - who'd have thunked it. This blog has now reached the ripe old age of 4. It seems much longer since I first thought I'd have a stab at adding my voice to the billions of others being ignored on the interweb, but here I am - still shouting pointlessly into the void. My blogging habbits seem to have changed quite dramatically during the years too; Where I once dipped in randomly, and blogged about a variety of topics (but largely F1) in small, ranty, bursts, now the blog reflects the longer postings that appear in my newspaper column. Were it not for this blog, I wouldn't have considered entering the Big Blogger contest that led to my glorious not-quite-winning and subsequent getting-a-column-but-without-a-prize. The F1 content may have lessened dramatically, but I think the depth of the writing has improved, and I'm sure I'm a better writerist for it. But then again, I'm still shouting down a wire with squillions of others, without the slighte...

Once upon a time, you decided you wanted something, went to a shop, and purchased it. Soon it might be delivered by unmanned stealth aircraft. When Tim Berners-Lee got fed up with TVs not being interactive enough, he decided to hook them up to some phone wire, attach the gubbins out of a couple of digital watches, took a few visual clues from Teletext, and the next thing you know, you’re watching an entire series of The Sweeney on your tablet from the comfort of your train seat, whilst annoying other passengers. Alternatively, you might be complaining vociferously on facebook about what an absolute chore it is doing the Christmas shopping, when you have had to look at literally several websites, before adding something to your basket and clicking ‘buy’. One the biggest companies to rub its hands in glee at all of our online shopping is Amazon who, despite some questionable ethics regarding tax (non) payments, and a documentary singling them out as particularly unpleasant clock-...

A recent discovery, of previously unseen family photos from 1973, had me fondly remembering the good old days. Until I thought about it a bit more. After my Mum died, we had the sad task of disposing of the contents of the house me and my brothers had grown up in. I wound up with several boxes of odds and ends, which I put in a cupboard, and hadn’t plucked up the courage to look at for nearly a decade. When I recently opened one, I discovered a vintage slide viewer (you could tell it was old – it was actually made in England and it didn’t work properly) and a box of slides. To my surprise and delight, there were photos of me and my younger brother when we were small that I hadn’t seen before. To give that some context, whilst some families were filming each other with Super 8 cameras, or reeling off endless rolls of film, photographic evidence proving that I haven’t always been old, hairy and tired is scarcer than rocking horse poo. I sent them off to a company I found on...

Blimey. I've just noticed that this blog has recently passed the 40,000 views mark. When I actually start to think about that, it's genuinely quite startling. I still can't believe that anyone is actually coming here to read my random outpourings on purpose, but just in case you haven't landed here entirely by chance, or because Google bunged you in my direction due to a a tag, hello and thank you. You're clearly a very nice person.

(A sequel, for my friend and Niecelet Rebecca) It was a normal day aboard the pirate ship. Assorted ruffians and hornswagglers were wandering around on deck in the sunshine, trying to look tough. It had been several weeks since the lookout pirate in the crow’s nest had shouted “Land-hooooooo!” and got everyone excited, before admitting it was actually a bit of fluff on his telescope lens, and not land at all. After he’d recovered from being thrown overboard, he had spent the last week sulking in the crow’s nest, occasionally throwing weevil-infested ship’s biscuits at the angry pirates below. Red Becca stood at the very bow of the ship, one foot resting on a barrel, staring thoughtfully into the distance. A strange, clomping sound of one boot, and a piece of wood, alternating on the deck behind her, alerted her to the approach of the ship’s rather hopeless captain. “Hello, Bumchin.” Said Red, without looking over her shoulder. “Yargh!” Replied the startled pirate. “How’d ye...

If you don’t like Doctor Who, then there’s something seriously wrong with you. Maybe you should see a Doctor. Unless you’ve been caught in some kind of temporal distortion (or the pub – it’s hard to spot the difference sometimes), you can’t have failed to notice the overload of all things TARDIS related invading your TV, like some kind of badly dressed alien invasion. After documentaries about it’s early days, in-depth analysis of the top 10 enemies of the time-travelling do-gooder, and more appearances in the media than the cast of The Only Way Is Essex on overtime, tomorrow night sees the culmination of Who Fever, as the 50th Anniversary episode airs at 7.50pm. And not just on your humble tellybox in the UK either. It’ll be going out simultaneously in 200 countries, to a potential audience of 100 million viewers. Where anyone has been foolish enough to purchase a 3D TV, they’ll be able to enjoy Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt waving themselves (and the special effec...

It must be Christmas – the big retailers have started releasing their TV adverts, with the sort of fanfare previously reserved for blockbuster movies. Featuring levels of snowfall that would make the arctic look a bit slushy, cute children, perfectly formed snowpersonages and Christmas trees that were clearly decorated expensively by an interior designer (rather than your Mum after 4 glasses of sherry), the unrealistic on-screen perfection will have us all depressed long before we’ve even started wondering where we put the tinsel last January. And then there’s that John Lewis advert, in which a sad little hare leaves a present for his bear friend, to make sure he joins him on Christmas day. As it’s not yet the season to be jolly, I thought it warranted a spot of closer analysis, because I actually DO have the lightness of spirit and joy of Scrooge with a hangover. Firstly, it’s jaw-droppingly selfish of the hare to wake the bear up from his hibernation. I wouldn’t blame our gri...

Formula 1 motor racing is great! What’s harder to explain is why fun in the sport seems harder to spot than a sponsorship-free... well, anything, really. I’m copiously aware that not everyone shares my passion. For many, the foots balls win their hearts, and it is true to say that there aren’t many F1-related chants (unless you count an inappropriate and un- sportsmanlike booing of German multiple-winners). But the passion and fervour is there, from the long-suffering fans of great British teams like Williams (who have been forced to keep a very stiff-upper lip whilst the team underperform like Boris Johnson at a subtlety contest) to the red-hot Italian passion of the Tifosi, for their beloved Ferrari. After a promising start to the season, it rapidly became clear we were once again facing a Sebwash from the brilliant young German, Vettel. Having achieved four World Championship titles in a row, he is clearly up there with the all-time greats of F1. And yet his dominance isn’...

It’s been an exciting week, with many visitors to our humble abode. The trouble is, they weren’t invited, and they’re eating everything and leaving a right mess. If I’m honest, it’s partially my fault. When I first picked up the bag of bird seed in the cellar drawer, and spotted some loose bits in the bottom, I should have investigated. It was only when I moved the bag of peanuts days later that I realised there were a lot of holes in bags, and a large amount of empty husks. In the usual, paranoid way, on realising we were under attack, I immediately spun round, expecting to see something (and at this stage, I wasn’t clear what, so looked wildly up as well as down) crawling, scampering, running, hovering, or even doing some kind of interpretive dance. My guess was that we had a mouse loose about the house. Being sensible, I transferred the seeds and nuts into tins. I’d purchased them to keep outdoor feathered animals fed, not uninvited furry indoor ones. I...

“Hi! Welcome to the Onesie Show, with me, over exuberant Welsh lady, and him, manic DJ who can’t stop talking. Well, have we got a show for you tonight..!” Ever since they first started appearing a few years ago, I have been one of the stalwart, old-fashioned, types who stood up and declared that the onesie was the single biggest threat to humanity since Big Brother hit our TV screens. For hundreds of years, this great nation has done perfectly well with a nice pair of pyjamas, or a nightie (depending on your gender, or preference. I find nighties get tangled up when I... We’ll move on, shall we?) I suppose the thing about the onesie that really got to me was not the garment itself – if you want to wear an oversized baby-grow of man-made fibre in the privacy of your own home, that’s entirely up to you – but the fact that it has been seen outside of its intended environment, with people actually think its OK to wear them to the supermarket, or drop the kids off at school. Its ...

It is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The only slight problem with this is that both seem to have occurred in our kitchen. Many life-affirming things happen in our kitchen. My signature dish of toasted bacon sandwich is obviously a highlight, as is the making of really quite passable cappuccinos, utilising the bargain espresso machine we picked up reduced to clear. True, it is made almost entirely of a type of plastic seemingly designed specifically to absorb liquid coffee, but it’s rather unpleasant brown-stained exterior is forgiven as it brings forth a decent fluffy beverage. Living in a terraced house, the kitchen is also the portal through which everything ‘out the back’ has to pass to get to the front, including the lawnmower. I suppose I could walk all the way along the terrace at the back, but I’ve been enjoying the expressions on the faces of our neighbours when I emerge from the front door with a lawnmower. Especially as we have no lawn. Being an allot...

Hello. My name is Peter, and I’m addicted to Formula 1. It’s been one week since I got my last fix, and it was a vintage one... Last weekend we headed into Ambleside to watch the Formula 1 movie “Rush”, directed by Ron Howard. The afternoon could have started better, but a traffic incident and a bent car are all part of living in Cumbria, right? The film recreates the drama of the 1976 season, where James Hunt and Nikki Lauda battled it out for the title, with dramatic results along the way, including a fiery near-death experience for Lauda, which saw him given the last rites in his hospital bed, before returning to the track just six weeks later. Although I am hideously old nowadays, I hadn’t even reached double figures when the events flashing by on the screen took place, but my enthusiasm for the heady world of fast cars has allowed me to become pretty knowledgeable on the era, and the look, fashions, attitudes and styles of the period are certainly ones I can relate to fr...

Much like the Wombles, plants are overground, underground, and taking up space in one, without generally doing much of use in the other. Not any more. News came in this week that green-fingered boffins have created a Frankenplant, which is tomato up top, and yummy spuds in the muddy stuff underneath. Before those of a sensitive disposition start fearing that this is one of those genetically modified plants, and we’re just a short step away from Triffids turning the tables and having us for lunch instead of the other way around, fear not. This ‘Tomtato’ plant (see what they did there? Heh!) is in fact not the product of some cellular-level fumbling, but actually harnesses the long established process of splicing, whereby you take two different plants, chop them up, and stick the bits together. Preferably the bits you want, if at all possible. It sounds simple, and I even possess one, although admittedly it is two varieties of apple on the same tree, which unsurprisingly is as ...

I’m normally quite interested in the weather. Particularly so at the moment, as it’s free to wander into my house unimpeded by trivial things like a roof. Our quaint terraced house was built using local material, over 100 years ago. Just like a flesh and blood equivalent of the same vintage, it certainly has lots of character, charm and rich history, but some bits are similarly rather creaky, occasionally damp, and a bit... leaky. Our 7 years under its protective roof have highlighted the fact that it is indeed the bit over the top that is of greatest concern for a our future dryness, as the Cumbrian slate, whilst mostly sound, is being let down somewhat by the vintage cement that’s meant to hold it in position. Unfortunately, at the time of its original installation, no-one had got round to inventing the nice, waterproof, underlay that nowadays sits protectively between loft space and tiles. Consequently, a century of strong winds, frost and rain, has combined to alter the ...

The terrifying, high-speed, derailment of a train carrying ridiculously volatile nuclear waste this week, shows just how... wait, what... 5mph? Oh. On Monday, there was a slight derailment of a train somewhere between Roose (which I’m sure is what Jeff Lynne sings in ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down”) and Barrow. Travelling at a dizzying 5mph, the train was going almost twice the speed of the commuter trains that usually frequent the line. Although ‘frequent’ is something of a misnomer, as people have been known to miss their train, strike up a conversation with a fellow stranded passenger on the platform, fall in love, then go through a messy break up before the next scheduled train shows up. What made this near-catastrophic event even more fear-inducing was that it was nuclear train! And here’s the really scary part – it was entirely free of any nuclear material whatsoever. This is all starting to sound like a 70s disaster movie, isn’t it? Yes, the flasks on board the train were emp...

The wristwatch is dead. Only tell the time? Pah! All hail the Smartwatch! Once upon a time (sorry) we had wind-up watches with hands, which told you the time and maybe the date, as long as you didn’t mind spending half a morning winding it on by 24 hours when there were only 30 days in the month. Februarys resulted in owners turning up at Casualty with blistered fingers and wrist sprains. Then, some enterprising folks noticed that liquid crystal displays, when linked up to computer bits, a teensy battery, and a lot of cheap plastic, could also tell the time, in a particularly-hard-to-read-in-the-dark kind of way, as pressing the button for the light usually meant you could see the hour, but not the minutes. These had the ability to act as an alarm clock, playing tinny electronic renditions of classical tunes, chime annoyingly on the hour, and be suitably wrong that every school classroom circa 1981 sounded like it had been invaded by crickets for about 5 minutes either side ...

There are many good explanations as to why I have poor memory skills. Drinking. Smoking. Styling mousse over-indulgence in my early 20s. But there is one less obvious one... Whilst the march of time seems the most plausible, scientific scenario, the gentle decay of my grey matter is only a minor contributory factor in the great scheme of things. For sure, genetics comes into it too – my Mum had a similarly scatterbrained storage system, whereby important stuff like her bank card PIN eluded her, but what I wore on my 4th birthday was recalled with photographic detail. I’m utterly hopeless with road names and numbers. If I head to the tropical climes of the South, I know I use the M6 for the first bit, but I’m damned if I can remember any of the others. I know the name of my road in Arnside, and I recognise a lot of the other names if they’re mentioned, but can’t quite work out which name goes with what road. It would explain why I didn’t get that job as an ambulance driver. ...

I’m getting on a bit, aren’t I? I mean, look at that picture of me up there. You may have been thinking of words like “thin” and “fashion”, but probably only if “on top” and “disaster” are added immediately afterwards. There is good and bad in this. After fighting it gamely for years, there is probably little more satisfying in a man’s life, than finally reaching the point where you suddenly realise you just don’t give a damn about anyone else’s opinion of you any more. On the other hand, there’s that desperate, lingering death of your sense of decorum and style, as you frantically try to convince yourself, friends, colleagues and anyone else unfortunate enough to come into visual contact with you, that you are still, resolutely “with it”. Sadly, the “it” in question is usually a massive confusion over what you think is trendy, and what actually IS trendy. This can be detected by increasing use of bold colours and wearing clothes that look good on someone half your age, but...