grumpyf1

“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 ...