grumpyf1

Some people would probably be quite pleased to be woken up in bed by strapping men in uniforms. I wish to state, for the record M’lud, that I’m not one of them. After my poor-quality cappuccinos and Health & Safety blighted weekend in Wales, I was looking forward to a nice lie-in on Saturday morning. After the trials and tribulations of yet another week of wearing outlandish shirts and pretending to know about marketing, I thought I’d earned it. Life firmly declared that I hadn’t at 3.45am, just as the first hint of dawn crept into my room (That’s ‘dawn’ with a small ‘d’. I have to be very careful with capital letters, as my Sister-in-law is called Dawn. It could get quite awkward). The loud sound of an engine, and flickering lights, saw me clambering to the window as fast as my old bones would carry me. Had there been an arthritic tortoise present, he might well have got there first. As there wasn’t, I tentatively peeked through the gap in the curtains, just in case it w...

I was in Wales last weekend. For a number of reasons I will now recount, I’m lucky to have made it out alive. The one thing that will stick in my mind from my visit to Welshland is a rather odd, but comfortably stereotypical one. I saw a sheep on a road. Not just a minor road next to a field. A road in a town. And the sheep used a pedestrian crossing. As I only came upon the road-traversing woolly one as it was completing it’s adventure, I’m not sure if it had actually waited for the lights to change. There wasn’t much traffic around, so maybe it didn’t bother pressing the button. Part of my weekend of fun, excitement and adventure involved clambering up a really rather large hill, which I was told had been Snowed-On, but I didn’t see any. Mind you, there was a railway line and a cafe at the top, so some frozen precipitation didn’t seem that unlikely. Regrettably, I forgot the fact that if you’re really knackered somewhere near the top, you’re in jumbo helpings of trouble ...

Miniaturised, covert, surveillance devices. But it seems we don’t need them any more – we just need to ask our Uncle Sam. This last week has seems some interesting political manoeuvring, whilst our Government squirms uncomfortably in it’s chair like a cornered naughty boy, pointing at their cousin on the other side of the pond and saying “it wasn’t ME! It was HIM!” If the stories are to be believed, it’s actually both. Whilst there have been strenuous denials on the subject of the UK illegally monitoring it’s own people, the clever Matrix-themed twist is that we’ve actually just let our American chums do it, then looked over their shoulder at the results. Is it true? Could that really have happened? Do you think anyone would actually tell us if it had? And even if someone did discover the truth, a quick Spooks-style surreptitious look at their internet history, who they’ve texted, the holiday snaps on Facebook and that ill-advised credit card purchase from that ‘specialist c...

As Matt Smith prepares to leave the role, speculation about his replacement as Doctor Who has mostly skipped the sublime, and gone straight for the ridiculous. With the 50th anniversary of the iconic BBC television show just around the corner, Matt Smith has just the Birthday bash episode and Christmas special to go, before he’s consigned to the Who Who’s Who of history. The media have gone increasingly bonkers with their ideas about who might get the coveted position, with even shouting-at-drummers-Queen-impersonator Dame Helen Mirren allegedly in the frame. John Hurt has also been suggested, which is hardly a feat of time-travelling clairvoyance, as he appeared at the end of the last episode. As The Doctor. Still, I’d like to throw my hat (and long, multi-coloured scarf) into the ring, as I believe I’m eminently qualified. I own an actual screwdriver, and I have some quite clever Apps on my phone, so I reckon I’ve got the whole Sonic Screwdriver bit well covered. I have some i...

Thanks, Mother Nature. After a tantalising taste of sunshine and warmth over the weekend, Bank Holiday Monday was, once again, wetter than a goldfish’s living room. Still, it wasn’t a complete waste of an otherwise perfectly good Monday, was it? Being British, some of us will have attempted to soldier on determinedly, whilst muttering “It’s just a bit of rain! Come on, it’ll be fun!” and hoping that someone would believe us, or at least go along with it for a bit. I reckon there is a good case for turning our Bank Holiday mud bath into a fun game for all the family though. So I’ve come up with some categories for Bank Holiday Top Trumps. Who can score the highest in each category? How exciting! 1) Car Boot Sales turned into a less amusing version of ‘It’s A Knockout’ by the weather, with people desperately trying to sell a bunch of rusting tools, kids clothes, radio cassette players, VHS tapes and Beezer Annuals from 1974, whilst attempting to stay upright with water flung a...