That was the year that was

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 in Nuneaton following ‘civil unrest’ ahead of some Footballerist game. Seems a bit harsh; I get quite grumpy when I haven’t had any food too.

April: 17 year old Paris Brown steps down from the role of Youth Police Crime Commissioner after just six days, following controversy over twitter comments. #LOL #fail #sarcasm

May: UKIP leader Nigel Farage is heckled in Edinburgh. Not really news, as he’s heckled everywhere, but maybe journalists were surprised because he was in a foreign country.

June: Two Peers are suspended. I though all peers were suspended – usually between legs, to stop them falling into the sea. Apparently, they were undertaking parliamentary work for payment. Can I have some candy floss now, please?

July: Andy Murray won Wimbledon, which I imagine really shocked The Wombles, as they’d always assumed the land was rightfully theirs.

August: The world’s first lab grown burger is produced in London, and a fifteen ton ‘fatberg’ appears in the sewers. Must have been a ‘value’ range one, then.

September: Chessington World of Adventure bans animal print clothing, saying it confuses the animals. Two things: 1) Who is still wearing animal print clothing? 2) Where ‘s their sense of Adventure?

October: Peter Higgs receives the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory on bosons. Why did they give him a prize for that? Everyone knows they’re in charge of stuff on boats, don’t they?

November: Grace Jones, the last person to be born in the 1800s, dies at the age of 113. It was probably that hula-hooping whilst singing ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ in front of the Royals.

December: A scruffy looking, balding, resident of a coastal village in Cumbria is arrested, on charges of crimes against proper journalism. Pleading laziness, he’s bailed, which is odd, as he isn’t the slightest bit interested in cricket.

Happy New Year – May all your headlines in 2014 be the nice ones before the weather lady.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column in the North West Evening Mail on the 27th of December 2013. You can read the edited version used by the paper on their website here, where it was retitled "My take on the year's stories", which it literally quite literal.

45 words didn't make the cut, including the opening line and all of the 'Quality Street/Gran/Michael Ball' section. Having received the printed version today (thanks, speedy postie!) the short, monthly, paragraphs took up more column space, hence the trims.

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas, and I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2014. I have a terrible decision to make about my vinyl record collection and redecorating the 'office', so I may have to drink more than usual...

(Christmas present CDs!! Currently listening to "A Symphony of British Music", from the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. Feeling all patriotic, although there is a chance it could be a side-effect of over-eating. Hard to tell.)

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 ...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

Suffering from natural obsolescence

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog