One hill of a problem

We all own stuff.

Some of it is quite expensive. Latest iPhone? Nice car? What about an overgrown hill..?

For most of us, the most expensive thing we’re ever likely to have to contend with is a house. I like to proudly proclaim to be a house owner, but that isn’t strictly true due to the, not insignificant, financial irritation of having a mortgage.

Whilst some folks are lucky enough to own houses that can boast needing 7 digits to describe their worth, most of us won’t ever feel the need to purchase something as big as a mountain.

But purchase one you can, as Blencathra is up for sale. Slight problem, though – you’ll need 1.75 million pounds to buy it.

The Earl of Lonsdale (whose family have owned this rather large bit of Cumbria for 400 years) has a spectacularly whopping Inheritance Tax bill to settle, so is flogging it. All 2,676 large, slopey, acres.

The recently formed ‘Friends of Blencathra’ are attempting to raise funds to purchase it, in the hope of keeping it accessible to the public, and so far have 7,500 people who have agreed to stump up some cash to meet this objective, with less than a month to go before the deadline.

The alternative seems to be that it is snapped up by an individual or organisation who wants to have a slice of pointy Cumbrian goodness on their portfolio.

But I think we’re missing the even more worrying prospect of it being taken out of the country. It happens all the time with priceless bits of artwork, rare books, and other dusty artefacts that people with hyphenated surnames and the word ‘expert’ in their job title get hugely over-excited about.

It might take a while, but the new owner could have it dismantled, neatly putting a sticker on each piece of stone, clump of earth and startled sheep, before protecting it in bubble wrap and popping it on the back of a lorry.

Reassembly in some far flung gazillionaire’s back garden seems like a frightening possibility. All that would be left would be a large, muddy flat bit that... oh, hang on.

Cricket pitch, anyone?

Back in the swirling mists of time I was a nerdy school kid, who spent lunch hours hanging out in the ‘Resource Centre’, ostensibly to help, but largely to get my pre-teen mitts on new technology.

One of the biggest revelations was a Betamax video cassette recorder. The fact that you could record TV programmes blew my tiny mind. Amongst the first shows I recorded was The Young Ones.

Anarchic craziness, slapstick violence, and brilliantly funny, it had one other essential quality – it was the sort of thing my parents disapproved of.

Amongst the larger than life characters was a ‘right-on’ wannabe poet, played by Rik Mayall, who sadly died this week.

Thanks for the laughs, Rik, and for helping me realise there was a type of humour my generation could embrace as their own.

This post first appeared as my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 13th Of June 2014. You can view the edited version used by the paper here where it was retitled 'Mountain is a status symbol'. Nope... me neither.

I wasn't sure I had a whole column's worth of ideas for the Blencathra part of this column, but it turned out I could could comfortably have written a whole column on the passing of Rik Mayall.

In hindsight, I should have done a full column on Rik this week, then the Blencathra story next week. Foolish boy...

Nice beard, bridesmaid! Gives me something to hold on to! Woof!

(Actually listening to the radio. I KNOW. Go me, eh?)

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...

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