grumpyf1

Apparently, he’s never going to give you up, let you down, run around or desert you. And his latest album is number 1 almost three decades after his last chart-topper. Rick Astley (steady, ladies) – for it is he, of course – has made it to the top spot for the first time since 1987. The last album of his to do that was also his first, titled, you’ve guessed it, “Never Gonna Give You Up”, featuring a track with the same title that gained him huge success, and a rather odd legacy. Back then, the youthful Richard graduated from Tea Boy to Stock, Aitken and Watermen (the three horsemen of the Popaclypse) sausage-factory success with the irritatingly catchy tune, his surprisingly deep voice, wholesome image and some questionable dancing skills. A number 1 hit in 25 countries, Rick continued to churn out the hits for his pop-paymasters until 1990, ditching their stewardship in favour of a more soulful style. Three years later, he’d packed it in – at the ripe old age of 27 – to focus ...

You know when you haven’t been on the web or checked you email for a few days? No, me neither. Around a decade ago, deciding to go online was not a decision to be taken lightly. Our laptop (significant in itself – we had one web-capable device to share) took a while to boot up, and then there was the ceremonial laying of the modem cable - unravelling it from the reel and stretching it to the other end of the house, where the phone got unplugged so we could bathe in the warm glow of the internet. There was no surfing the web – if you were lucky, after the whistly-tweety dial up noises (and some possible “connection failed – trying again” messages) a trickle of internet reluctantly entered the house like a nervous mouse, ready to vanish at any moment. If someone emailed us a picture, it was time to go and make a cuppa. A 2MB photo would take several minutes to squeeze itself down the narrowband. Still, it was pretty awesome. In 10 minutes or so, we could be looking stuff up and...

The lot of the humble mug is not a happy one. Held lovingly between two hands one minute, languishing, cupboard-bound, the next. I had a nasty cold this week. I did what any sensible person would do and resorted to the chemical embrace of some cold-cure capsules (because, clearly, some powder in a shiny two-coloured gel casing, costing four times as much, makes them far more effective than if they were just a tablet with the same ingredients). Mixed with hay fever tablets, the unexpectedly warm weather and a lack of sleep, this had two effects: A very slight reduction in the number of times I sniffed unpleasantly per minute, and a spaced-out sensation that caused my mind to wander. Considering my mind strolls off like a stray cat on a night out at the best of times, that can be slightly alarming. This time, for no discernible reason, I found myself thinking about how many mugs I’d owned in my lifetime. It’s a story containing harrowing tales of neglect, unpleasant staining and ...

Lean in a bit – I need to whisper this. The weather has been really... quite good recently, hasn’t it? I know. Weird, right? As someone who wanted to be a meteorologist whilst growing up, I find the weather pretty darn interesting. After our recent winter, even a met-nerd like me discovered the clouds had lost their lustre, the silver lining notably absent. So with last weekend’s Bank Holiday looming, and having already had a lengthy run of lovely weather, I made the logical assumption; it would be cataclysmically awful. Rain, wind, maybe even snow and a miniature tornado to get the 24 hour rolling news channels all excited. But it was, as I’m assuming you noticed, even nicer than before. Warm. Dry. Smashing. I have red marks on my arm from pinching myself to check I wasn’t dreaming. And it continued this week too. To further enhance the distinct and unexpected pleasure this has delivered, it appears to have been cloudy, binning it down, and distinctly chilly in the south and...