grumpyf1

Yesiree – If the internet is the information superhighway, I’m currently parked up on the hard shoulder with four flat tyres. When I moved to my current South Cumbrian abode, less than a decade ago, I used to have to unravel a very long phone extension cable from a reel and stretch it from a socket upstairs all the way to the back of the house where the computer hung around, sulking at being kept away from all the good stuff online. This process was bad enough (the windy handle on the reel had broken off from over-use, so ‘browsing blisters’ were a distinct possibility), but even when the cables were all connected, the dial-up modem allowed a pipeline of data to rush into the house at a speed so great that being emailed a photo meant I could comfortably watch all the Star Trek movies back to back before going back to see if it had finished downloading. That’s assuming the connection hadn’t dropped out just before it finished, then started all over again, of course. How quickl...

Twins? Looking pleased? Holding results? Jumping in the air? Must be GCSE results time again... At this point in the week (give or take a day or two due to my ineptitude and laziness) I'd usually be posting my weekly newspaper column here, in all it's unedited, and unedifying, glory. Right up until Thursday afternoon, things were going pretty normally on that front. I'd subbed my 500 words first thing Thursday morning, rather than the usual Wednesday night (more on that next week - was that a 'spoiler'?!), but assumed I'd hear no more until Friday. At that point it might have shown up on the paper's website but, if not, I'd know when the post came on Saturday or Monday for definite. For the previous 169 submissions this had worked pretty well, with a couple of exceptions involving me forgetting to actually attach it to the email one week (thankfully rectified just in time) and penning a column considered libellous by the paper's editor and l...

"You WHAT?" Yesterday saw the funeral take place of the wonderful George Cole. A talented actor, he will probably be most fondly remembered for his portrayal of Arthur Daley. A long time ago, I occasionally had the surreal experience of walking home from school and passing a very familiar character, sat in his car. George Cole’s daughter was in my younger brother’s year, and he used to pick her up just like any other dad – except he was in a Jag, and as far as every kid at school was concerned, he was Arthur Daley, the ‘dodgy geezer’ who would do anything to make a spot of dosh, even if it wasn’t entirely legal or scrupulous, on hit ITV show ‘Minder’. Running from 1979 to 1994, the show initially focused on Arthur’s ‘Minder’, Terry, played by Dennis Waterman (fresh from his success in ‘The Sweeney’), but it soon became clear the interplay between the two, and Cole’s comedic genius as the double-dealing, cowardly, cigar-smoking Arthur (complete with trademark Tril...

Vitamin D – I was pretty sure it was a Kraftwerk track from the early 80s, but the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition reckons we need more, so it’s just conceivable I’ve got that confused. Maybe it was an early Ultravox track, before Midge Ure showed up with pointy sideburns and someone suggested a moody black and white video for their song ‘Vienna’. Midge looked pretty pasty in that (and we are getting near the point now, honest) which coincidentally seems to be what the white coat folks at SACN are concerned about too. Their draft guidelines suggest that we should be taking a 10 microgram pill a day of Vitamin D as soon as we’ve managed 12 months on the planet. Or, to be more accurate, 12 months in the UK, because we don’t get enough of the lovely sunshine which our skin cunningly converts to the very vital vitamin. They aren’t alone either. Those other acronyminous funsters NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence... anyone else concerned that th...

Higher education – I think they call it that because, much like a mountain, the peak seems an unattainably long way off. Apart from having stood outside a door saying “Head Teacher’s Office” whilst waiting to give blood a few years ago, I’ve not had any brushes with education for something in the order of 30 years. It must have worked out reasonably well last time, as I was able to figure out that time span without taking either of my socks off and using my toes to count. According to my school reports, I was “a disruptive influence”. “Quite bright” and “lazy” regularly appeared in the same sentence too. Still, what does The System know, eh? My sports teacher gave me a report that was word-for-word identical to a lad who had been signed-off due to injury for two months, so who’s laughing now? In an alarming turn of events, whilst the nation’s young learners are embarking on their summer break, I’ve somehow managed to find myself heading back into a frightening universe that ...