grumpyf1

This is an intervention - step away from the cheese. I hope you’ve had a wonderful festive season so far? Just a few days to go until the Doctor Who special. Oh, and the New Year. The days are getting longer, and we’ll soon be done with a year dominated by Brexit. 2019 will be better, right? Right? Please say yes. I thought I’d finish the year with a romp through my notebook, allowing me to serve up a few choice items that got me thinking over the last 12 months, but didn’t make it into full columns. A kind of Bubble & Squeak of randomness. Mmm... Has anyone ever wondered what time-travellers would think if they jumped forward 30 years to today? Considering the number of smokers back then, it would be easy to assume that cigarettes had now been replaced by people carrying small bags of dog poo around. 2018 featured an awful lot of meals with pea shoots on them, for no discernible reason. I’ve even had a fry-up with them on. Is there a committee that decides what this year...

Yippee-Ki-Yay, motherlickers! What will you be doing on Christmas Eve? Snuggling up with the kids, looking forward to the Big Day? Out with friends for a drink? Desperately trying to find cranberry sauce in your local supermarket? I prefer my plan. I’ll be in a cinema, watching 1980s action blockbuster ‘Die Hard’. In case you have somehow missed this oft-repeated classic, it stars Bruce Willis as New York cop John McLane. He’s meeting up with his estranged wife and daughters at her Christmas Do, when terrorists (not really – they’ve come to rob the vaults but decided to do it the flamboyant way) take over the high-rise building of her employer making everyone a hostage, and McLane very, very, annoyed. Cue explosions, destruction and mayhem as he goes on a one-man, wisecracking, rampage to take down the bad guys and rescue everyone. It’s a stone-cold classic romp. I can’t think of a better way to spend the evening, and I’ll be all happy and warm inside and out once the end-...

When you pop into a shop for something relatively inexpensive, how do you pay? Are you fumbling around in your pocket/purse for the right coins, only to find you haven’t got quite enough and have to break into a note? Do you pop your credit or debit card into the reader, tap in your PIN and accept your receipt? Or are you wafting your contactless card in the general direction of the payment thingy, before heading off as soon as the assistant says ‘done’? I’ll freely admit that I’ve only recently started going contactless. I’m still comfortable with cash – it’s nice to instantly see what you’ve spent based on what’s left in your wallet. However, I do understand the logic of the modern method of paying for your bag of chips, double-shot mochachino or (up to) 30 items from your local Pound Palace. But digital regicide is sweeping our land, overthrowing the old regime of paper and metal tokens. The BBC this week reported on a London pub that has stopped taking cash altogether. I st...

Missing you... Disaster – we forgot to buy an advent calendar. No teensy, hard to get at, unidentifiable shaped chocolate treats hidden behind cardboard doors and impenetrable foil for me this year. Still, there’s plenty of time left to consume my own body-weight in mince pies, cheese and pigs in blankets before the inevitable guilt (and medically necessary dieting) kicks in as 2019 shows up excitedly just when I’ve started getting used to 2018. So, instead of wasting a shed-load of packaging to get at the equivalent of a very small chocolate bar, here are my environmentally-friendly Adventness Delights for you – a treat for every remaining day as we count down to the online sales. (And Christmas.) 18: Jona Lewie successfully Stops The Cavalry. 17: You win £50. 16: The kids are well-behaved. 15: The algorithm that shoves ads into your social media timeline fails for the day. 14: Unlimited Chocolate Hob-Nobs. 13: Calorie-free cheese that still tastes fantastic hits...

Old... Gold. There really is something rather joyous about seeing a favourite band live. And there’s something rather miraculous if you’re seeing them getting on for 40 years since you first discovered them. I was lucky enough to see both Midge Ure (former owner of pointy sideburns, Vienna means nothing to him) and The Human League (still concerned in case you don’t want them, baby) last weekend, and both were fabulous. Both were also hitting the top of the charts in the early 80s and whilst they have had long careers, many people will remember them largely for their first flourishes of success. Neither Midge, nor The League’s front-man, Phil Oakey, are exactly youngsters now, with bus-passes just around the corner, and the interesting hairstyles long gone. But boy, they still go for it, rattling out the hits and taking their audience back to a time before worrying about pension funds and aching knees became the norm. Neither insisted on playing much in the way of later nu...