grumpyf1

Nice hat, Sir! Twas the night before Christmas (well, almost) and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a m... hang on a second! Are you telling me that the rodent population not only understand the concept of stirring, but are also familiar with the idea of time and therefore know when Christmas is?! I think we may have vastly underestimated them, and it probably explains why cheese-baited traps aren’t very successful. It’s that very special time of the year –when you turn the TV on, hopeful that you’re about to get a new Christmas-themed episode of your favourite show, only to discover that it’s a ‘bonus’ outing recorded in August, featuring the ‘best of’ bits you’ve already seen, and some leftover new stuff and outtakes you haven’t (largely because they weren’t good enough to make the original show). This column is a bit like that... except the ‘best of’ part doesn’t exist. Moving swiftly on... January: In order to accurately research this column,...

I have a dream. A dream where the green fingered come together to make something beautiful (assuming the slugs don’t get it first). There may only be 16 plots in our humble village allotment site, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a thing of loveliness, does it? An oasis of tranquillity, carefully tilled soil, green shoots of promise, and the occasional cheery Robin perched on a frosty spade handle for effect. So keen are the keepers of the sacred scrolls that even sheds are not allowed to blight this patch of serene calmness, split only by the occasional shriek of Mrs G putting her hand on a Slow Worm in the long grass. True, the bountiful fruitfulness, and plentiful... er... vegetableiness does attract some local deer who wander in from time to time, no doubt impressed by the neatness and the fact that some kindly humans have generously provided them with a neatly arranged salad bar. In an attempt to politely deter them from scoffing the carefully grown and tended produc...

What were the strange ‘explosions’ heard nationwide last Saturday night? Fireworks? Experimental Spy plane? Alien invasion?! I suppose if it was the latter, we would probably know about it by now. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from science fiction shows, it’s that your average alien doesn’t hang around for a while observing – they get straight in there with the killing or probing. Or both, depending on how annoyed they are with Bruce Willis. Having said that, they were a bit more discreet in 1990s paranoia-fest the X-Files, and merely wanted to control mankind. That might explain why it’s taken until now for Gillian Anderson to randomly take all her clothes off on television. But I digress. The pulses of bangs at about 10pm last Saturday were widely heard, with many people assuming it was just a random fireworks display, with one rather unusual feature; you couldn’t actually see it. Whilst Twitter did it’s brilliant thing of pulling together lots of people who all want...

So Lewis Hamilton is F1 World Champion 2014. Congratulations to him, but even more so to his rival, Nico Rosberg. That’s F1 all done and dusted until next year, then. You can’t fail to have noticed Britain’s Lewis Hamilton all over the papers, TV and internet following his 2nd World Championship title success in Abu Dhabi last Sunday. He’s certainly had to wait for title number two – his first came in 2008,when he was a fresh-faced McLaren youngster, and looked a lot less like the cool-dude, diamond-ear stud wearing favourite of the press, with the Pussycat Doll girlfriend and chronic mood swings, that he has become since he joined the dominant Mercedes team. He deserved it, too. His team-mate, Nico Rosberg, had an identical mind-blowingly expensive motor, but managed less than half the number of race victories of the man across the expanse of immaculately polished garage floor. As early as round 3 the friends from karting days were working hard on destroying their relatio...