So good to be back home in South Cumbria

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 by the time you’ve got back down again. Still, my Damon Hill baseball cap from 1997 had a nice day out, clinging desperately to the top of my head in gale force winds, even if my knees didn’t enjoy themselves quite as much.

Apparently, the modern world hasn’t reached some parts of Wales either. I was served a pint of something that was allegedly a cappuccino, or at least could have been. Unfortunately, most of the ground coffee was down the outside of the mug, which might have explained it’s notable lack of coffee flavour. I might be being picky, but coffee should really taste of coffee. The froth on top also vanished as soon as a spoon approached. So, a cup of very hot water, with a hint of milk, and a suggestion of coffee. Must try harder.

Escaping slightly ahead of schedule, I then met with the wonder that is Health & Safety. I couldn’t get a seat on the train (of course), so opted to stand in the doorway of the buffet carriage. I ordered a nice hot cappuccino (which a machine did far more effectively than the cafe earlier) and accepted the fact that a lid would be put on it, to prevent me spilling it.

The nice chap behind the counter then went to put it in one of those strangely tiny paper bags with handles. Being an environmentally friendly sort (I’ve been recycling my jokes for years), I said “don’t bother with the bag”. The chap smiled, in a resigned kind of way, and said “I have to, sir. Health & Safety”. I needed to transport it a whole 2 feet. As the train was, for some reason, hotter than the surface of the sun, I decided not to argue.

I’ve never been so pleased to see the familiar stonework of Lancaster station, and know I was almost home. Cumbria is quite sane, really.

This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on the 21st of June 2013, where it was retitled 'Welsh drinks cause a stir'. You can view the version used by the paper here For a change, it seems to have gone in unedited.

In hindsight, this does sound quite like a whiney, middle-class, bunch of grumbling about relatively unimportant subjects. Actually, that's exactly what it is.

That's my own photo of the sheep mentioned in the article. I may take up a career in reportage-style photography next.

Having been woken at 3.45am this morning by men in uniforms, I think I may have a topic already lined up for next Friday...

(Listening to They Might Be Giants - "Here Comes Science". You're never too old to learn something.)

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 ...

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...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog