grumpyf1

(Not actual size - they're probably bigger.) Some good news for the planet this week, in the battle against plastic waste. There’s an enzyme that chomps up PET, the plastic used in bottles. Left to it’s own devices, the plastic takes hundreds of years to break down. The creatively monikered PETase enzyme starts breaking it down in a handful of days. All good so far, then. Nasty plastics feed some friendly enzymes. Win-win, right? Not quite – it gets a bit creepy when you look into it. Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium that consumes PET. Like something out of a sci-fi film, it was discovered quietly scoffing plastic at a bottle recycling plant in Japan. Our friendly bacterium uses the enzyme as part of the snacking process. Bit weird, but fine. It seems that some plants do have a protective layer made up of something vaguely similar to polyethylene, so it’s evolved from that. Pretty damn quickly, as we’ve only been turning out plastics at scale for half a century. A ra...

Poor LewLew. Everything's SO terrible right now... What a difference a few months makes. Lewis Hamilton clinched his fourth Formula 1 title last Autumn. The British driver looked a pretty good bet to make it five in 2018. But here we are – three races in, and he hasn’t won a race yet. If you count the end of last season, he hasn’t won the last six. His arch-rival, German Ferrari ace Sebastian Vettel, won the first two, with Smiley Aussie Daniel Ricciardo bagging the other one last weekend in China. Vettel did have a problematic race there, so Lewis did gain a bit of ground and now sits nine points behind Seb in the championship standings. It’s far from over, though. There are 17 more races to go, and whilst Ferrari seem to have a great car this year, Hamilton’s Mercedes squad aren’t exactly amateurs – they’ve won the constructors championship for the last four years. Lewis is sad though. Poor, gloomy, Lewis. He’s so upset, he’s taken to saying things like “I can’t have ...

Cheer up, fella - it might never ha... oh, right. Yeah. In case you somehow missed the widespread coverage this week, TV presenter Ant McPartlin has been fined and banned from getting behind the wheel after pleading guilty to drink driving. Quite right too. The incident could have resulted in serious injury for those involved, and no-one should be driving when even a small amount over the drink drive limit, let alone be more than twice the legal maximum that the star registered when breathalysed after the incident by police. McPartlin’s actions resulted in a three-car collision, which he accepted “full responsibility” for, and admitted that he was “ashamed and mortified” but “thankful no-one was hurt”. It has resulted in a 20 month ban for Ant, and an £86,000 fine, which is believed to be among the biggest dished out for such an offence. Here lies the problem, though. If you happen to earn the £130,000 a week that he does, having someone drive you to appointments for the next...

"The area for tickling levitating babies is located to your right, where ladies in billowing skirts should also congregate..." Go on – admit it. You’ve always wanted to deck out your house like an airport departure lounge, haven’t you? Good news, then! The entire contents of Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 1 are up for sale, three years after it closed down. Presumably the gigantic gap since the last plane arrived there was to allow enough time for everyone’s baggage to appear. For the aeroplane-obsessed family member in your life, you could bag a cool baggage carousel. Or make that arduous trip upstairs a whole lot easier with an escalator. If those are a little on the large size for the average home, maybe a check-in desk would be handy for your office. Perhaps you’re concerned about the protection level of your abode. In which case, the 2000 security cameras might be a useful way of decreasing (or increasing?) your paranoia. At a more practical level, rows of uncom...

Hands sweat free? Check... Much of what I have learnt about human nature has been acquired in cafés and restaurants. One particularly fine example of this occurred recently, during my holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. Whilst enjoying a lovely meal, I discovered that the UK’s leading expert on evading interrogation was not some James Bond-esque figure, but actually a middle-aged woman from the North East at the next table. Perhaps having enjoyed one Martini (shaken, not stirred) too many, she was busy informing her friends – and everyone else in the restaurant – about how she would cope with any attempts to extract information from her, or get her to admit to something. Apparently, “It’s easy to beat one of them lie detector test things they have in America. It’s all about sweaty palms and that… what do you call it? …pupil delilations. I could beat that easy.” Remarkably, our super-cool expert went on to explain that she doesn’t have sweaty palms, so she would be fine. In thes...

Not pictured - dicks is trainers and jeans with lightweight jackets. Contrary to what some arrogant people seem to think, just because you’re outside doesn’t mean you are free of rules as well as walls. An abundance of Lycra or some very expensive branded walking gear doesn’t grant you automatic transcendence from the need to use common sense. You obviously think you look like a professional athlete in your figure-hugging kit, or rapidly-wicking microfibre £120 T-shirt – so why not act like one, and stop thinking the rules don’t apply to you because you’re above that sort of thing? There seems to be a depressing modern attitude of selfishness and a casual disregard for measures put in place to protect you – yes you, you expensive outdoor-gear-wearing clothes-horse – and other people. It manifests itself in a variety of ways. In the space of a couple of weeks, I’ve seen impatient idiots in expensive 4x4s put two wheels onto pavements to get past a car turning off a road – even...

Hi. Did you miss me? To say it's been a busy few weeks would be a major understatement. I've packed for holiday, packed for moving house, been on holiday, came back to sign paperwork, went back to holiday, came home to move house, went back on holiday, and came home to the new house. Currently unpacking, and trying to figure out how everything works (e.g. Q: Why isn't the new washing machine pumping out the water?! A: Whoever fitted the waste water hose under the sink omitted to take the plastic bung out first...) Anyway - here I am! I'll post this week's column(s) over the next few days - yes, I also wrote that whilst on holiday -  but thought I'd share a couple of milestones, even if it seems no-one else is particularly bothered. The Russia/Horse in a disco/Cream-tea fury outing of the 9th of March was my 300th published newspaper selection. From the "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column of 500 words in the North West Evening Mail, through ...