grumpyf1

  When you need glasses for stuff in the distance and for reading, you know you’re getting old. I therefore declare myself ‘ancient’. I should probably have ‘Listed’ status. It’s been an interesting month, during which I’ve been both youthful and elderly. The younger me saw the new Star Trek film and got irrationally excited (I was wearing my Captain’s socks at the time). The older me had yet another birthday, went to the opticians, and had depressingly confirmed what I already suspected; I need more than just my regular distance glasses, I need some for close-up stuff too. Apart from my wedding ring, there’s nothing I wear more than my specs (unless a casual air of sarcasm with occasional notes of disdain and an underlying accent of discontentment is counted, obviously). I’ve had many over the years, and shocking photographic evidence exists: The gold framed, round, ‘Lennon’ specs; the gigantic plastic ‘Oh look, it’s the bloke out of 80s pop one hit wonder The Buggles’...

Sometimes, I'm amazed at how epic I am at being an idiot. This week was a brilliant example. On Wednesday night, I emailed my newspaper column to the North West Evening mail, ready to go in Friday's edition. Whilst at work on Thursday, I received a reply saying I hadn't attached anything. I'd like to say it was a technical glitch but, if I'm truly honest, it was just me being a spanner. An exchange of emails (including one suggesting I could try rewriting it from scratch) resulted in me emailing it when I got home (but delayed another 15 minutes by my laptop installing updates), but I will almost certainly have missed the folks who shoehorn my words into the paper. As it turns out, I just don't know if it made it... The Columns page on the NWEM website hasn't been updated for a week (which means my last column is still the most recent one listed), and I can't pick up the paper locally, so only get my copy by post on a Monday/Tuesday, or wheneve...

I often think this country is rather odd, and that it would be far better if I got to rule it. But what if there was a land I could rule? Now there is: Petieania has risen from the sea! A few years ago, the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay began to reveal a small patch where the tide was depositing, rather than washing away. Just outside Travis Perkins and The Ship Inn on the edge of Sandside, it has gradually grown to a point where it even has some tufts of grass growing on it’s young surface. After first observing it’s early attempt at forming a land-like appearance a few years ago, my visiting niece, Lucy, and I agreed that it should have a name, to give it a sense of purpose, as it battled the twice-daily eroding rampage of the incoming tide. Being an immensely selfish Uncle, it became Petieania, rather than Lucytania. It was agreed that it should be defended against invaders, but lacking an army, we decided that guard albatrosses (or albatri, as we concluded the plural s...

Staring at one of those spinning images on my computer screen, whilst something was loading (or was it? You’re never really sure, are you?), I started pondering how much of my life I’d spent doing just that. And it got me thinking. Of course, once upon a time, in the dim, distant, dark ages of computing (so any time prior to last year, then), a spinning loading image was a handy pointer that you had enough time to pop off and make a cuppa, do a spot of hoovering, and – depending upon the complexity of whatever it was trying to load – maybe even have lunch. Not now though. Things have moved so fast, that loading times have been dramatically reduced, so we need only spend seconds waiting. What was once considered miraculously brief is now considered more lethargic that anaesthetised sloth. But I’ve done the calculations, and I reckon I see that little spinning thing, in all it’s varied forms, at least a dozen times a day. Say... 5 seconds on average. That’s a minute a day. Doesn...