Christmas leftovers/tidying up after Christmas

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 Considering the number of smokers back then, it would be easy to assume that cigarettes had now been replaced by people carrying small bags of dog poo around.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’s pointless garnish is? I’m imagining a meeting going like this:

“OK – Thanks for coming everyone. Our job is to decide what wacky item gets introduced to the culinary world this year. Ideas? Yes, Clare...”

“Pea shoots.”

“Pea... shoots?”

“You know. The end of the stems on pea plants.”

“Are they even edible?”

“Yeah. Probably. Who cares?”

“Fair point. I think we have a winner...”

Remember when a weighty manual came with any tech/gadget you purchased? They were big and encyclopedic in their detail. I got a new phone this year, and the 6x12cm manual was a massive 10 pages long. The text is so small, you need a magnifying glass to read it. Screens get bigger. Manuals get smaller. Coincidence?

I did have one genuine, profound, thought this year. What if we don’t actually need to be thinner, more fashionable, calmer, have better skin etc. to be happy? What if we are, in fact, fine just as we are, and it’s society that’s messed up? Then I had a cappuccino and went back to my day job as International Man Of Misery.

My sincere thanks to Donald Trump and Lewis Hamilton for providing so much inspiration for my wry look at the week this past year, and thanks to you for kindly tolerating me. I hope 2019 is a fantastic year for you.

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday the 28th of December 2018. The version used on their website ran as "Thanks for inspiration - Donald Trump and Lewis Hamilton". It did have a picture of me at the top, but was listed as by Tom Murphy, Audience and Content Editor. He edits audiences?! Bit harsh.

This one was actually written the day after the preceding column, as I was away for Christmas. Not as many leftovers in my notebook as there used to be, as I don't make that many notes now - I tend to write on the fly. Tricky, because they're very small, and tend to fly off mid-word.

These were the first two columns written on my new laptop. I get very used to a piece of computing kit, so this was quite a wrench. So far, it's Dell-y good.

An interesting year, column-wise. It started with a 500 word "Thank grumpy it's Friday" outing, changed to a full-page, 1000 word "A wry look at the week" gig in two papers, then dropped to 400 words in just the one again.

339 columns/pages to date, over six and a half years. I wonder what 2019 will bring..?

Have a great new year.

(CD A-Z: Still that Chris Rea mammoth box set!)

Going Underground

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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...

Is it cold? Snow way...

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...

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