Are you still writing that... what was it again? A blog?

Great gosh almighty - I've been a newspaper columnist for five years.

Shut. The. Door. It's five whole, actual, year type things since my first outing sullied the pages of the North West Evening Mail, preceded by the "Finalist becomes columnist" piece you see here (exceptionally poorly scanned - I was obviously over-excited and/or over-caffeinated). I'm not actually that colour, honest.

A rambling, nonsensical brain-dump of weirdness, it's interesting how, in those early days, I was already writing in exactly the same way I have continued.

Strangely, column number 255 appeared on their website today (a day ahead of the print edition) which is a nice, unintentional, anniversary marker. Spoiler alert: It's about our fridge-freezer breaking down. I know - cutting-edge, hyper-topical, journalism, eh?

On a less celebratory note, visits to this blog (where it all began, of course) reached a low point in April not seen since November 2010. I guess I need to write something about a popular TV show/film again... I've got an idea...

Thanks to everyone who has supported me over the years, even the ones who can't remember what it is I do. But especially to the ever-lovely Mrs G. She has to read this stuff first, and I know if I've done well by the amount she laughs. Until I realise I've left my flies undone again.

Paranoia leads me to to think that I'll be dropped at some point, when the paper finally realises they've made a terrible mistake, but if I wasn't doing this I'd be ranting on a street corner, or shouting random stuff about wind chimes and Audi drivers in a park. And no-one wants that. So they're helping to keep the public safe, really.

Your tolerance for the last 1800 days or so is greatly appreciated.

(CD A-Z: Mike Oldfield's 2003 re-recording of "Tubular Bells". Cavemen!)

Comments

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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