grumpyf1

In better times... We’ve battled rain, wind, rain, snow, some more rain, deer, rain and some strange orange weevily things with a very high leg count. And now we’re losing the plot. As any keen gardener will tell you (probably whilst leaning on a garden fork and looking knowledgeable and suitably weathered), it’s been a tough year. A late, cold, spring, amounts of sunshine that the word “inadequate” fails to accurately describe, then the soggiest winter since records began, have left many a horticulturist downhearted, under-vegetabled, and contemplating trying to grow rice to see if that will cope any better. For mere weekend-weeders like us, it has been particularly harsh. With jobs consuming Monday, Friday and those other ones in-between, Saturday and Sunday have to accommodate all those other life-enhancing things that need doing too. Like decorating, shopping, trying not to think about Monday and wishing, desperately, that your Lotto numbers come up soon. The universe h...

Ooh, I say - this blog has now cleared 70,000 views, which is rather staggering. And when I say staggering, I mean frankly mind-boggling. My stuff has been viewed more than 70k times?! By who? You guys must be really bored, or landed here by accident, or there's a short-circuit somewhere. I'll take it though. Thanks for dropping by. Strangely, this months stats are already the second highest monthly total ever, and it seems possible that they'll pass the March 2012 high point, when I was shamelessly prostituting my soul and trying to get everyone to support me in that Big Blogger thing. The world is strange place. So's the inside of my head - good to know some folks want to see what comes out of it. That sounds awful. I'm leaving now before I type something stupid. Donald Trump. Shit.

A quick look down the list of new films hitting your local flea pit this year proves you can’t get too much of a good thing. Apparently. It does appear that a similar conversation took place in the senior executive offices of all the big Hollywood studios, something along these lines: Big Exec: We need ideas! What do people like watching! Underling: Um... well, er... I quite like Star Trek. Big Exec: Great! Any of the original actors still alive? Never mind, we’ll make a new one, with new actors! Underling: We... uh... already did that. Twice. Big Exec: Great! We’ll do a sequel to the sequel to the original TV show. Underling: There were about a dozen Star Trek films before tha... Big Exec: NEXT IDEA! How about Dad’s Army! Underling: What? Are you crazy?! Big Exec: I’m on a roll! Star Wars! Batman vs Superman! Ghostbusters with ladies! Ker-ching! Consequently, next time you’re ankle deep in discarded popcorn and groaning under the weight of an industrial buc...

There are some fascinating people out there, who are more than happy to talk about themselves, look familiar, but don’t actually exist. “Hi! I’m Gina. I’m 46, have two teenage daughters, I’m an Office Manager for a law firm, I read The Guardian and interior design magazines, I like keeping fit and supporting charities, and I spend time on Twitter and Facebook. I live in the North West and I would say the websites I visit most are BBC News and anything with kittens covered in salami and wearing lederhosen. Why? Because I’m not real, dummy!” If you work for an organisation that sells something, has a website, or generally feels it needs to understand more about their customers’ “experience”, you may well have met Gina, or someone like her. She might have looked like your burly marketing guy, or the barely-out-of-her teens social media whizzkid, but that’s only because they’ve been talked into making her up, then had to go through the excruciatingly embarrassing process of ‘being...