Unwelcome lighting up time resumes

Autumn: The season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, and idiots using their car’s lights inappropriately again.

Pretty much as soon as the cold weather descended, and the evenings started to draw in alarmingly fast, we had the delight that is drivers on our roads with a selfish streak, or possibly just a complete lack of brains.

On a splendid run along the A591 on Monday (you remember Monday – it was the one with all the wind and rain) before daylight had bothered to show up, I found myself squinting blearily at the dazzling lights ahead of me.

Had I taken a wrong turning in my pre-cappuccino befuddlement, and arrived on the front at Blackpool at lighting up time? Had the sun gone into supernova, leaving me with just minutes before the end of the universe (and ready access to a cappuccino)? Can I please just have a cappuccino?

No. Despite the fact that the sky was depositing an inch of rain in the space of a couple of hours (so that’s where it all went!), the person in front of me had their fog lights on. I can only assume they thought the extra light bouncing off all the raindrops and spray would help them see ahead a tiny bit better. Hell, maybe it even did.

Regrettably, for anyone who had the misfortune to be following them, the effect of their dazzling rear fog lights through the rain and spray was surprisingly similar to pressing your face against a set of traffic lights just as they turn red. Don’t ask me how I know that.

So bright was the red light reflecting everywhere, it was impossible to tell how far the car was ahead, which lane it was in, or if I was actually mistakenly approaching the lighting rig of a Pink Floyd gig circa 1987.

Back in the mists of time, before I had the pleasure of writing this newspaper column, I was but a humble blogger. In January of 2012, I beseeched my numerous followers (three, I think it was) to turn their fog lights off when it wasn’t foggy.

I realise now that a crime of that magnitude (whilst heinous, and rightfully deserving of harsh penalties) is but the equivalent a of pinching a single chocolate from the pick and mix, whilst switching them on in the dark in a downpour is akin to attempting to stuff every Creme Egg ever made into your mouth at the same time. Don’t ask me how I know that, either.

Are some people really that selfish and inconsiderate? Is it even conceivable that people who were capable of passing a complicated driving test might never have noticed how much a bright light refracts through rain?

On the plus side, any lost aircraft will be able spot a bit of tarmac to land on easily – it’ll be the road full of half blinded, coffee-deprived, newspaper columnists with a marked squint and angry facial expression, getting Monday off to a really bad start.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 10th of October 2014, where it was retitled as "Rear fog lights far too dazzling", which is pretty literal, isn't it? The column went straight into the archive on the paper's website, without a credit, but if you fancy a look, you can find it here. On the plus side - no scary picture of me.

Apologies for the lateness of posting this - it's been a hectic couple of evenings in front of the computer, for reasons I can't currently reveal. There - I've dropped an element of suspense in. Clever, huh?

(Tonight's tunes, fresh through the letterbox and into the CD player, are by The Beatles, from "On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2". I'm so cool, my bangin' tunes is only 50+ year old, man. Innit? Respeck.)

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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