Understand Sherlock? You must be dreaming

It may have been a whole week ago, but my New Year got off to a baffling start when I watched “Sherlock” on TV, and started doubting my own existence.

I hope you had a delightful Christmas, and that 2016 is off to a great start for you. Congratulations if you’ve already successfully finished all that cheese.

Having viewed the BBC’s most-watched festive edition of “Sherlock” on the very first day of the year, I now have a rather odd problem - I’m not sure if I actually did watch it, or in fact just dreamed I did. Maybe I’m still dreaming that I’m thinking about whether I dreamt it or not.

If I’m making no sense at all (probably a regular problem for you), then perhaps I’d better rewind a little an attempt to explain why I’m so confused. This may not go well, as I’ve pretty much no idea myself.

The modern re-imagining of the Conan Doyle detective, Sherlock Holmes, sees a very current version of the sleuth deducing all manner of marvels from clues invisible to the regular man-on-the-street.

The New Year special saw the pipe-sucking genius attempting to solve the mystery of how a murderous bride carried out her rampage whilst apparently dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. All fine and weirdly dandy, except for the fact that Holmes & Watson were wandering around a 1890s landscape.

It later transpired that all of this was, in fact, a drug-induced dream, in which our tetchy hero was attempting to solve a vintage case in his ‘Mind Palace’.

I had an experience like that once myself, when I overdosed on Lemsip and imagined I was dating both Sheena Easton and Kylie Minogue at the same time. Coming down from a cold-cure high can be a terribly depressing experience.

Anyway, this plot-twist was an interesting one, but shortly after that point my brain waved it’s white flag, as the Victorian Sherlock started describing to Watson what the future looked like. Following that, I think there was some stuff which involved a dream within the dream, but by that time my grey matter was gently rocking itself back and forth in a corner of my skull whilst humming a pretty tune repeatedly.

Having discovered, by chance, that some people in my local cafe were relieved to hear that they weren’t alone in their Sherlock struggles, it transpired that some Twitter-chums were also suffering from Holmes-related bemusement.

On the plus side, being unsure if everything is real or not does mean that I may actually be dreaming all this, and I’m actually a Lottery-winning playboy enjoying a quick snooze to recover from a particularly heavy champagne and Aston Martin-purchasing session in my mansion.

The alternative is that I have yet again been out-foxed by a TV show before the year was even 24 hours old, and I have a Scrumpy problem and a Mitsubishi with creaky suspension.

Pass the Lemsip.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 8th of January 2016. You can view it on the paper's website here

Two weeks off from writing. It was an interesting experience, and whilst I was tempted to blog, I decided against it and ate chocolate instead. Mind rested. Body several pounds heavier. The circle of (my) life.

My neglect of this blogzone rapidly reversed the giddy experience of having the second best month ever for views in November, as December saw the stats slump to a low not equalled since Feb '14, with a number only a little more than a quarter of the preceding month. Ah, well. What was I expecting eh? I neglected you.

With studying to contend with, some quality doing-sod-all time was a blessing for recharging the mental batteries, and I actually made it until almost 10am on my first day back in the office before getting irrationally angry about something.

Assuming the NWEM don't finally decide I'm using up valuable column inches with my inane ramblings and cut me loose, 2016 will see my 200th column for them appear in early April. For the maths nerds amongst you, that will mean I have rearranged 100,000 words into a vaguely structured format for the purpose of entertainment. Cripes.

Maybe I should do that book after all...

(2016 continuation of the CD A-Z sees me at the Eagles, and the really rather splendid Long Road Out Of Eden from 2007.)

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 ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...

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