grumpyf1

"Sorry, can't stop - busy saving the planet." I love the smell of petrol and hypocrisy in the morning. As a fan of the fast-moving circus that is Formula 1, I’m used to people pointing out that there’s nothing exciting about some over-paid guys driving round in circles for two hours. I’ve also become accustomed to being preached at about all that flying around the world and petrol-guzzling engines being terrible environmentally. Shame on me for supporting it, etc. One of F1’s biggest stars, Lewis Hamilton, has certainly made my life a little harder when one of those conversations kicks off next. He’s told the BBC in an interview that he’s going to adopt a vegan diet, for health reasons and because he’s worried about emissions... from cows. When he points out that pollution from the back end of our bovine chums is “more than what we produce with our flights and cars” he’s actually pretty much bang on. Our love of beefy stuff and the unfortunate by-product of guff...

If you paid someone to make you a wedding cake, and they took your money but delivered it two weeks after the wedding, you’d be pretty annoyed. If, after that marriage failed dismally because your partner just couldn’t forgive you for the cake debacle, you were getting married again and the cake showed up 4 weeks late, you’d be livid (and possibly wondering why you decided to go back to the same cake creator after the first incident). Whilst not quite as ruinous to my relationship – I’m pretty OK at that without outside assistance – my energy supplier is pulling a similar stunt. I won’t give away their name, but they supply Gas, and they’re British. Anyway, living in a draughty old house whose windows were installed immediately after glass had been invented, I really need to know that my boiler will be in tip top shape, and there for me when I really need it. To help with this, I have one of those monthly payment insurance schemes, with rapid emergency call out should somethi...

Singing megastar Taylor Swift doesn’t like ticket touts. But she loves her fans. If only there was a way to put the two things together and just make everything all lovely. Luckily for her, her chums at ticketing agency Ticketmaster in the US have helped her come up with a smashing idea that foils the touts (boo!) and rewards the fans (hurrah!). No-one wants those nasty ticket touts buying up all the scrummy tickets for her gigs and depriving her adoring “Swifties” of their chance to see their heroine in all her shiny live splendour. So they’ve come up with the idea of letting her fans improve their chance of getting a ticket by letting them earn “boosts”. These could be for things they’re already doing, such as downloading Taylor’s albums, watching her videos on youtube, posting selfies, and buying merchandise. The touts won’t be doing that, so the people who deserve to get tickets are higher up the queue and access a ticket pre-sale. So far, so sparkly. But hang on a mome...

What to do on a Bank Holiday, we wondered? Anywhere in the Lakes would be heaving with tourists gawping at the views and parking badly. So we decided to go to Edinburgh. True, we failed to spot that it was the Fringe Festival, but who doesn’t like a nice, big, crowd? They also seem to be knocking down a chunk of the city, but never mind – it’s big. There are plenty of other un-demolished bits to enjoy, presuming you can get near them amongst all the other people. Whilst the south of the country basked in temperatures pushing 30C, the over- crowded bit of Scotland was a moderate 18C, with a breeze sufficiently strong that what’s left of my hair took on a ruffled look. We’d travelled up early for our day of intellectual shop-browsing and cappuccino consumption, letting the train take the strain, and had even spotted an interesting bridge from our luxurious carriage. Some web-browsing subsequently revealed it to be the just-about-to-open Queensferry Crossing. Bonus – we’d already ...