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 Considering the number of smokers back then, it would be easy to assume that cigarettes had now been replaced by people carrying small bags of dog poo around.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!)

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...

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