A life less linear

Big news as we plunge, screaming, towards a Brexity, Trumpy, 2017 with no idea how to stop - I’m obsolete. Technology has finally beaten me.

It was inevitable, really. I’ve previously stated that people who don’t file their music alphabetically (by surname) are destroying the very fabric of civilised society. I’ve no desire to Snapchat. There’s still a radio/cassette player in our kitchen that is ‘digital’ in that you have to use your fingers to press the buttons.

I’m trying hard to adapt to the fast-changing, technological, future that’s bunging a new and baffling development in my direction on a daily basis.

For instance, we recently got one of those TV stick gadgets that allows you to stream programmes via the internet. Very clever. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting about it. You can’t see it, the remote is so small it’s hard to find and none of the programmes are in the TV guide that we buy each week, then circle what we want to watch with a biro.

There are masses of TV shows I can watch a whole series of in one sitting, if I fancy it. It’s like going into a sweetshop and eating all the chocolate bars in one go – it sounds great, if feels good for a while, and then you start feeling a bit weird and dizzy.

Even worse, as we’ve decided to replace our ageing car, it turns out more recent ones only have a digital radio and USB port. It seems like yesterday that I argued with a dealership about how I wanted a tape deck in my one and only ever new car, when it came with a new-fangled CD player.

Now I can’t even have that. If I want to listen to my own music, I’ll have to download an app to my phone, connect it with a USB cable, or Bluetooth, and play it from that. My phone has pretty good memory capacity, but I don’t think it’ll hold all my 1681 CDs.

I’m not sure I even know how to make it play all of an album in order. It’s permanently on shuffle, which makes listening to concept albums a frustrating experience.

Currently, I jump in the car, pop a CD in the slot and away we go. I’ll soon have to put the phone in the cradle, connect the USB cable, plug it in, open the app, and... well, it’s all a bit hypothetical after that.

All I really want for Christmas is to be able to shove something physical into a slot and have the Electric Light Orchestra come out of the speakers, without the need for a degree in programming and the type of technology astronauts use.

And finally...

Thank you for not bombarding the North West Evening Mail with requests to have me removed for another year – you’re really rather lovely. A very Happy Christmas to you and yours.

See you in the weird gap before New Year where the mince pie allergy kicks in.

This post first appeared as my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 23rd of December, 2016. The version used on their website was re-titled as "Technology has finally beaten me".

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas? We're currently attempting to cope with the shock brought about by the failure of our PVR box thing, taking with it a month's worth of stores programmes and the ability to record anything. We're actually having to watch programmes live, and miss some altogether. I. KNOW. At Christmas, too.

That CD count is now out of date too, thanks to Christmas presents. Now 1688...

(CD A-Z: Marillion's "Popular Music")

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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