Fixing flooding over breakfast

The atrocious weather of just a week ago brought home the pressing need to come up with an economic and effective way to prevent flooding.

Fear not – I have a solution!

To say it was a bit damp last weekend would be an understatement similar in magnitude to me saying I’m receding a teensy bit.

So heavy was the rain that it wouldn’t have been a surprise to hear a report of otters calling it a day and heading for somewhere dry indoors, preferably with under-floor heating.

Whilst many people and their homes were affected, it appears that overall we had a very near miss, with towns such as Kendal escaping serious flooding by a matter of a few watery inches.

Although it seems we are temporarily through with the intense liquid onslaught, the now waterlogged ground once again leaves us at the mercy of any impending low pressure wandering into the area with prolonged downpours on it’s cloudy mind.

In an attempt to try and come up with a solution to this problem, I had a brainstorming session with some of the finest minds available in my office that hold 3 people, whilst eating mince pies (it is vitally important that you feed ideas with seasonal snacks).

Us all being experts in our respective fields (Marketing, IT and Health & Safety) didn’t help as much as you might think, and we were facing not only failure, but some very small, depressingly empty, foil dishes, when the answer came to us in a sticky-fingered sugar-rush: Weetabix.

You know – the oblong, wheaty, breakfast cereal generally detested by children for being a bit dull and flavourless, and consumed by adults who have concluded it’s probably about time they stopped having Coco-Pops when they’re past 30.

Anyone familiar with these breakfast bricks will know all about how good they are for you, but also that they are TARDIS-like when it comes to milk, being able to absorb a volume of cow-juice larger than themselves, then come back for more like a dehydrated cat.

Scientific tests (I once owned a lab coat, so that counts, right?) have proven without doubt that own-brand supermarket WheatyBisks can see off a whole glass of milk, but the original, poorly-spelt, Weetabix can slurp up a pint or more.

The solution to flooding problems is simple then – buy a load of them, then stack them up along riverbanks, the edge of lakes and that road you always get held up on every time it rains hard. I’ve done some calculations, and I reckon about 25 boxes should be enough.

If you’ve got any left over afterwards, you can always liven them up with custard on at breakfast time, or use one to sand the skirting boards next time you’re decorating.

Got to go – the Environment Agency and the manufacturers of Silica Gel are pretty annoyed with me for some reason...

Next Week: How to solve the nuclear waste storage problem using Rice Crispies.

This post might have first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 20th of November 2015. The reason for my doubt is threefold:

1) No sign of it on their website
2) No print edition has arrived in the post
3) It was one of my less sane offerings, so it's possible it never made it at all

I'm assuming they would have let me know if 3 were the case, but maybe they're just hoping I won't notice. If anyone spotted it, please do Tweet me at @grumpyf1.

We honestly did have the conversation in the office, by the way. Today I actually choked on coffee whilst laughing at a something. I like coffee, but breathing it in isn't recommended.

Mad stats on this blog in the past few days: 300-400+. No idea why, and they're almost exclusively from the States. Bless ya!

(CD-based musicality emanating forth from the cheap Hi-Fi tonight: "The Symphonic Jean Michel Jarre". Rousing.)

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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