grumpyf1

People who bite their nails – they’re weird, right? Strange, nervous, creatures with a disgusting habit. They should just stop it. Like all long-term habits, quitting nail biting is far more difficult than just suddenly packing it in. Unlike smoking, alcohol or drugs, there isn’t any chemical dependency, but the addiction to nibbling is still difficult to kick. I should know – I quit smoking after more than 20 years on the cigs, but this is proving to be a much harder battle to win. Unsurprising, really, when you think about it. I didn’t start smoking until I was into my twenties, but I’ve been biting my nails for as long as I can remember. I have no recollection of starting to do it, or even having ever thought about it much. It’s an easy habit to continue too – no matches required, you don’t have to pop to the shops to get more and it’s entirely free. The only cost is the crippling inability to get a starting point when trying to peel a label off something. But I’ve had ...

Smoochy-smooch! It’s Valentine’s Day. Did you remember to get a cutesy teddy holding a heart with the word ‘Love’ on it for that special person? I expect there are a fair proportion of readers who are having a damn fine grumpy old time today, complaining about how the Americans spoiled a perfectly good Pagan ritual by brainwashing us all into thinking that true love can only be accurately communicated by us purchasing a very big card, writing in it, and then giving it to the bemused object of our affections. I was amongst your kind, until a frightfully unusual sensation came over me. After I realised that half a packet of Chocolate Chip HobNobs had probably given me a sugar spike so large I was in immediate danger of Diabetes, I did a little research into Valentine’s Day and discovered, to my horror, that for once we can’t blame our chums across the pond. Valentine of Rome had the extreme misfortune of getting himself martyred somewhere around AD 496, which is particularly b...

Every man needs their own space. Somewhere they feel at ease, safe and relaxed. Mine is in the box room next to the toilet. That probably explains a lot... Ever since I first moved out of my parents’ house I’ve had my ‘man cave’ – a place to escape from the troubles of the world, and sit in splendid isolation. Or listen to music very loudly. Or write. Or anything else that doesn’t involve other human beings. In my first house, it was an entire double bedroom. It has subsequently shrunk with every move, until now my ‘office’ is the box room created when indoor toilets were invented, and a moderate bedroom became a tiny bathroom and even smaller room that really shouldn’t be allowed to have the word ‘bed’ at the front, for fear of breaching the trades description act. The use of plasterboard so thin to create the dividing wall it’s a surprise light doesn’t pass through it, means the sound effects can be pretty alarming, but it is my inner sanctum, my fortress of solitude, and n...

In the olden days, a fridge did a relatively simple job of keeping things cold; Spam, for example. Now they can apparently send you it as well. That’s the thing about technology. You chug along quite nicely, grateful for the really clever stuff, like pacemakers, satellite navigation systems, and the ability to turn the sound off on the TV from the comfort of your armchair whenever Miley Cyrus gets a mention. Then, without you having even considered that it might need to be a ‘thing’, you’re trying to figure out why someone might feel the need to own a toilet that can be flushed using an app on their iPhone. Or how knowing how many miles your twitter friends have run because their automatic logging system insists on telling you, is actually making your life better in any remotely measurable way. Whilst you might expect to find chips in your freezer, it’s the non-potato based ones that are now posing an unprecedented threat. It seems that the proliferation of domestic applianc...