Skip to main content

Goodbye, Thank grumpy it's Friday...

Image
By
Cheerio!

Thank grumpy it's Friday is no more.

After 291 columns (292 if you count the potentially libellous one that didn't get published), 145500 words, and 6 years, my days of writing 500 words a week for publication in The Mail have come to an end.

In case you hadn't guessed, this is the big news I've been mentioning for a couple of months now.

Having found myself, with increasing regularity, sat in front of a blank screen with the submission deadline screaming at me, I spent the latter part of last years worried I was drying up. This also got me questioning if I was actually any good any more.

With little in the way of feedback from either the paper, or it's readers, I finally decided I'd call it a day at the end of the year, and sent an email to the paper explaining at the start of November. Column 289 would be my last outing.

The reply was somewhat startling. They were just about to offer me a full page. Not just in the Mail. In the News & Star too, which covers the north and west of Cumbria.

Ooo. Validation. What to do?

I thought about it a lot. Chatted to a few people. Consulted Mrs G. I even tried a Twitter poll (42% said "Never stop - I love you", 50% "Keep going - you're OKish").

I still couldn't decide.

Eventually, I started being a bit more positive. I have ideas all the time and thoughts about things in the news etc. I'm just poor at remembering them. What if I (and this is shocking) WROTE THEM DOWN?!!!

So here we are. Jenwis Hamilbutton was killed off during Big Blogger. Thank grumpy it's Friday has ended.

The lure of a page to express my innermost weirdness, in two papers, was too much. I'm giving it a go. The paper wanted to badge me as "Cumbria's grumpiest columnist", but as I'm actually only grumpy 99.7% of the time, that didn't seem appropriate.

So now Fridays will be accompanied by "A wry look at the week".

Apologies to the 8% on Twitter who voted "Stop. For God's sake".

New title. New photo (thanks, Jenna!). 2 papers. 3 topics. A whole page. 1000 words per week.

Eek...


And here's the first outing from The Mail, with an initial teaser on page 2. Looks like the decision to go with "A wry look..." was too late for this edition. I'm presuming the same layout will apply in the News & Star, but I haven't got a copy yet.

I think I might be a little bit proud...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going Underground

By
The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Faking it for real

By
As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is it cold? Snow way...

By
Lunch out? Not unless you want snow balls... I’ve got a confession to make.  Lean in a bit, because I’m going to whisper it. Bit more. Did you have curry for tea? OK, good. I’m a weather nerd. There, I said it. When I was growing up, I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a fireman – I wanted to present the weather on the TV. I was lining myself up for a career at the Met Office when, at about 18 years of age, I discovered I was allergic to studying. Anyway, despite a jam-packed and varied career over the subsequent years, I still have a fascination for the world of meteorology. I even have one of those clocks that projects the time and the external temperature onto the ceiling at night, so I can see how cold it is outside whilst lying awake worrying that I might have wasted my life and been more successful with girls if I’d been more into cars than clouds. So far this year, I’ve gazed at a chilly reading of -5C a couple of times, and been grateful for previous sensible ch...
Post a Comment
Read more