All aboard! This service is for Trumptown. Hold on tight…

I don’t want to spoil your dinner if you’re trying to avoid Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President.

But if you’ve just fired up the cooker to warm up some baked beans, the fact that they’re shiny and orange won’t help.

In case you’ve somehow failed to notice, ‘The Donald’ gets the keys to the White House today, much to the immense bewilderment of a large chunk of the UK.

Putting to one side whether he’s actually suitable for the job (tricky, I know), I’ve been amused and appalled (in roughly equal measures) by his petulant outbursts on Twitter, as well as in the flesh.

He does seem intent on offending and alienating as many people as possible, doesn’t he? It took me a while to figure it out, but I think I’ve finally nailed who he reminds me of. He is every tired, grumpy, little brother, added together.

When you try to say he’s trodden mud into the house, he responds with “No YOU trod it in, and you should clean it up! Dirty!” Or you point out that there’s an unpleasant odour in the vicinity, and he responds with “You need to accept that the ONE WHO SMELT IT DEALT IT and apologise! Rude! Very smelly!”

After getting a polite roasting from Meryl Streep, Trump responded by calling her “One of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood”. The old charmer. He could have refuted some of her claims and explained why he though she was wrong, but no – character assassination and childish belittling seem to be more his thing.

In an impressive attempt to annoy the UK, he also sneered at the BBC last week. After calling CNN “Fake news”, when asked a question by a reporter from the Beeb, he responded with “That’s another beauty”.

And let’s not forget the modesty. Apparently, his “Inauguration is going to be so elegant”. Wow. Mind you, on the 5th of November he did tweet “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”, which sounds like he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing, and needs someone else to step in on his behalf and sort it out.

He also reckons his “cabinet is probably the greatest ever”. I disagree. We’ve got a particularly splendid cupboard at home, and I think our sideboard could give him a run for his money too.

It’s tough to take someone who complains about people having lost touch with reality seriously, when photos of them grinning in their gold-plated home pop up everywhere you turn.

If nothing else, President Trump will be entertaining. We’ve got four years of watching a slow-motion train crash to marvel at, as he does his best to alienate the entire world. He’s already started on NATO and Angela Merkel. Go big or go home.

God. Bless, America. We’ll be watching with a wry smile on our faces, and trying to resist the urge to say “We did warn you…”

This post first appeared as my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 20th of January 2017. The version on their website kept my title, but the print version was re-named "Little brother's watching us", whilst the page 2 teaser had "All aboard for Trumpton". Um...

So... it really happened then. A man I wouldn't trust to use a microwave without being nasty to my leftovers is now in charge of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons and a powerful country. OK, he clearly appealed to sufficient US voters (less than half, mind you) to have got into office. But he's a rude, arrogant, bully with not an ounce of humility or decorum.

Show your power and strength when it's needed. Be direct and forceful when it's required. Be steely and abrupt when it really counts. You'll be seen as a leader. Do it all the time, and you look like just another playground bully with deep-seated insecurities.

Good luck everyone. Hold on tight - it's going to be a bumpy ride on the Trumtown express...

(CD A-Z suspended again. Yes, I purchased new ones. Top of the Pops 1975-1979 currently playing - 3 CDs for a fiver. Schweet!)

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 ...

The Schaf Shuffle

The weather – source of endless fascination, conversation, irritation and (just recently) excess irrigation. And a fidgety weather presenter on the BBC... I’m endlessly fascinated with the weather, and will confess to making sure I catch the BBC’s updates whenever possible. Not the local ones, where half the presenters look like they got dressed in the dark, or ITV, where they seem to know very little about actual weather, but the national forecasts. Delivered by actual Met Office personnel, their job entails a tricky mix of waving your hands about a bit, explaining about warm fronts without smirking, and trying not to look too pleased whilst mentioning gales force winds and torrential rain. Or stand in front of Cornwall. Each has their own presenting style, but there is one who intrigues me above all the others. Step forward, Tomasz Schafernaker, the 37 year old man from the Met who breezed onto our screens in 2001, as the youngest male ever to point out that it was going to r...

RIP Jenwis Hamilbutton

We are gathered here in this... (looks round a bit) um... blog, to mourn the passing of Jenwis Hamilbutton. His life may have been short and largely irrelevant, but he touched the lives of so many people that... sorry? Oh. Apparently that was someone else... Jenwis Hamilbutton rose briefly to fame on twitter during 2010, when he was retweeted by BBC F1 presenter Jake Humphrey, having criticised his shirt. A similarly unspectacular claim to fame occurred when a tweet he crafted at 1am on a windy night appeared in F1 Racing magazine. An amalgam of bits of Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (mostly the hopeless bits), he came into existence via 3 pints of cider, a Creme Egg and the Electric Light Orchestra’s mournful 1986 farewell album “Balance Of Power”, played loudly over headphones. In his short existence, he was followed on twitter by Paul Hardcastle of “19” fame, and a bunch of slightly odd but jolly nice people, whom he was never entirely sure actually exist...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog