grumpyf1

If you work in a team, you’ll no doubt have at least one person that everyone is slightly uncomfortable with. In a meeting, they’ll sit there quietly, whilst everyone else is enthusing about the latest super-whizzo idea that’s going to reduce costs/save the world/make a million (delete as applicable). Just as you’re all about to reach a frenzied crescendo of exhilarated back-slapping at the sheer, shared, greatness of it all, they’ll calmly point out the things that could go wrong and scupper your revolutionary plans. No-one wants to hear that – it’s nice and sunny in your happy little world, and that natural doom-merchant has just caused the clouds of failure to roll ominously in. It’s about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. But, deep down, you know they’re right… damn them. Meet your natural cynic. They’re the glass-half-empty (and possibly cracked) ones. You could tell them they’ve won the lotto and their first reaction would be concern about whether they are capable of letting j...

  Just posted another great “buy our stuff” thing to Twitter/Facebook?  Did it have a lovely, well-designed (and correctly-sized) graphic with it? Attention grabbing text? Incentive? Website link? Fantastic! NOBODY CARES. I spend a lot of my time boring my colleagues to death by reminding them that they need to think like their customers. I’m taking the sighs and eye-rolls as a positive sign that they’re listening. Think about it, though. When you’re on your favourite social media platform on your phone, you might occasionally read (or even click-through) a promotional post that really matches your needs. But I bet you scroll past the vast majority of them. Even if you work in a marketing department. You know how much time and effort has gone into getting just the right image, messing around with font sizes, agonising over getting your message across in the shortest and most effective way… but you still scroll past. You monster. OK, fair enough. We accept that, don’t we? Most ...

You've got the idea now, right? By June, I was doing a few days of work here and there, but mostly still furloughed. As the lockdown started to unlock a bit, there was more opportunity to get out and about so... I mostly didn't. Sure, it was nice to be able to do so when I wanted to, but on my own? Yawwwwwwn. I'm not great company for myself. I did get a few long, solo, walks but being in a valley everything is up and I'm broadly exertion-averse, even though I really enjoy it when I'm out there. It's that initial motivation that's tricky. But you didn't come here to read about my intrinsic inability to go and do exercise did you? (Even if the prospect of getting a glimpse into the strange inner workings of my mind and understanding how I can enjoy something but not want to do it can simultaneously exist without my mind exploding is tantalizing.) So sit back, relax, and prepare to be mildly puzzle by what I read, watched and listened to in the month they...

  Ah, May. I "celebrated" my birthday during the merry month - bags of fun, considering nowhere was open and we still weren't allowed to go anywhere, other than for one daily bit of exercise. Hence, my birthday meal was enjoyed at Pizza Shut, also know as our kitchen, where I consumed a £2.99 pizza* from Tesco, received as part of our success at managing to actually bag a slot. Strange times. Anyhoo, as promised, here's the books, box sets and progression made through my music collection during the (unusually toasty) month. (* Pepperoni - king of budget pizzas) Books Keith A Pearson - Tuned Out (2019): Well, look at me being right-on with using technology! This was the first book I've ever read digitally. As opposed to being a positive step towards keeping up to date tech-wise, this was down to two factors; 1) It was free, as part of Amazon Prime membership. 2) Reading it on a tablet meant I could see it in the dark, as I'm usually awake waaaaay earlier than ...

Who doesn't like a list? Only weirdos, right? Right..? Oh, come on. I was furloughed at the end of March. Suddenly faced with an unprecedented (*over-used word klaxon*) amount of free time (my partner was still working) and only being allowed to go out once a day, I had an amazing opportunity to fin out what it might be like to be retired. Bit rubbish, it turns out. I'm hoping that when I eventually retire I'll have more opportunities to go to places/drink coffee/mooch about in shops, but the no-plan-for-today thing is still going to be there. It takes some getting used to. I'd normally get up at six to get ready for a day in the office. Strangely, my own internal alarm clock means I'm generally staring at the ceiling and and considering a variety of randomness somewhere between 0630 and 0700: Do I need to pee, or can I carry on lying here for a while? Why does my back hurt? I. Need. Cappuccino. I wonder if I've won the lotto? Is Lotus biscuit spread the single ...

Ever been really unlucky with a car? Yup - me too. Twice..? One of the best cars I have ever owned was, remarkably, a Fiat Punto. A nondescript, plain, basic, boring (and under-powered) Punto. In all the time I had it, it never broke down, and the worst problem it managed was a light that stopped working. It turned out the tip of the connector on the bulb was a bit rusty, so after a quick rub with some sandpaper (I did the bulb too) it was fine. Ooo, drama. Then I crashed it, as the unwitting fifth person in a queue all carrying out an emergency stop as some bell-end ahead had slammed their brakes on unnecessarily. After much delay, the insurance company wrote it off. Scroll forward a few years and I was looking to replace my Ford Fiesta. The local garage had a nice second-hand Punto - a newer model, but hey, it's a Punto. Cool. And it was, for a while. Then, one day, I went to go out and the battery was flat. Not usual flat, as in it sluggishly turns over a bit, or at least make a...

I was furloughed from my job at the start of April. Since then, I’ve worked a grand total of about 15 days in over three months. For the first time in 30+ years, I wasn’t working... but I wasn’t on holiday either. My partner was still working and, for the first couple of months, guidelines said you shouldn’t go out more than once a day to exercise, other trips should be for essential shopping only – well, you know how it goes, right? I don’t doubt for a second that millions of people have had/are having a very similar experience to me. A Covid-19 emotional roller-coaster: Initial response: WOW! Look at all this free time! I’m going to get all the odd jobs done, decorate, read, watch TV, write, better myself... the possibilities are endless. My God – what an opportunity! About a week later: Huh. This isn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it was going to be. Since then: F*** me, this is boring. I like a routine, so I’ve wound up with new ones, which just a few months ago woul...

I wish I could go back there again...  ELO lyrics aside, One thing that has become increasingly clear as I've got older is that, broadly speaking, a lot of the music since the 80s sucks. Big time. Prior to the 80s it was pretty good, but the peak was definitely during that golden decade. Annoyingly, that neat "best decade" argument isn't quite right for me. By the late 80s, with more hip-hop, rap, rave culture and shoegazing tunes coming in, the later 80s become patchier. A steady downhill slump was in progress, that continues to this day. There's still good stuff out there - just less of it. Here's where it gets interesting, and I'd like to test a theory out with you. I was a teenager between 1980 and 1986, and that's pretty much the exact years my favourite music comes from. Ponder that for a second, and have a think about your own musical Golden Years - does that work for you too? If pushed to make a call - and it is a tricky one - I'd go with 1...

Blink and you would have missed it. It was so brief, you probably didn’t even notice. But yes, I’ve had a bit of a break. Back when I started this blog (8 th of December 2009, detail freaks!) I had no idea where I was heading with it. I liked writing. I was running a Fantasy Formula 1 competition for friends. I’d moved away from the area I grew up in just a few years before. So there it suddenly was – the gumpyf1 blog. Over time it developed into more than an outlet for F1-related ramblings, and (after coming 2 nd in a newspaper blogging competition) I wound up writing a weekly column in a Cumbrian newspaper. Over the course of seven years it increased in size from 500 words to a full page, contracted to 400 words and eventually became a 250-300 ‘podium’ thing, with the paper dictating the often-controversial topic. From writing about just about anything I liked, in April 2019 I was suddenly being asked to provide a view on topics like “Would you welcome Donald Trump to the UK?...

If I decided to clamber onto the parapet of Walney Bridge and stroll along, you’d hopefully tell me to get down immediately – it’s dangerous. If I fell off, you’d be forgiven for saying you warned me, and that I was a fool for putting myself at risk like that. What if I’d spent years practising on the top of a low brick wall? Or been trained by an expert? Or had the right equipment, did it when the conditions were right, and had a permit to do so? I’d wager that you’d still say I chose to put my own life in danger. Scaled up to a mountainous level, is there much difference between my hypothetical bridge wander, and someone choosing to attempt Everest? As far as I can tell, no-one who has died on the massive mountain was forced into going up – they did it out of choice, for personal fulfilment and adventure. To take on an incredible physical challenge and overcome the danger to achieve something amazing. It seems that a variety of reasons are behind the large rise in deaths ...

If you’d asked me this a couple of weeks ago, I would have undoubtedly have said yes. I’d only caught a few snippets of the show over the years, and in those brief moments was pretty horrified at what I saw. From my very limited viewing, I rapidly formed the opinion that this wasn’t my kind of show. Why would anyone choose to go on TV to air their dirty laundry, and potentially discover something hideous about another person? Wife slept with your brother? Your sister is in love with your best friend’s killer? Sure – find that out in a TV studio in front of a live audience. Apart from my bemusement as to why anyone would want to put themselves through that, I couldn’t grasp why anyone would want to watch that happen. Voyeuristic, ghoulish, gaining enjoyment from other people’s misery? I didn’t get it. But much as I watch F1 and others love the Footballs, we’re all different. It was the most popular of ITV’s daytime shows. It ran for 14 years. So, not for me, but it was certain...

“Welcome” might not be quite the word I’d choose, but sure – let’s get Donny over to the good ol’ UofK and show him the true meaning of great British hospitality. He’s a polarising chap, isn’t he? At least with Marmite, people who hate the gloopy brown stuff have a choice of whether or not to consume it. With Trump, every time you look at the news, there he is – looking like he’s rolled face-first on the floor of the Wotsits factory, and spouting something that usually has people cheering or frothing at the mouth. On his trip to the UK last year, which was originally intended to be a state visit, the wave of public disapproval at the idea meant he popped over briefly, managed to ignore all normal protocols when he met the Queen (who’d have thought he’d be in any way disrespectful to a woman?) and brought us together as a nation for a rare moment. Whilst Brexit continues to divide us, Donald’s appearance meant the public united to protest about the Orange One’s arrival, launch a...

This is a bit weird. I'm not a newspaper columnist any more. After submitting my foldy phones piece last week, I received an email saying The Mail are rearranging how they do things. Going forward, there will be a weekly "On the podium" section on a Monday, where a particular topic will be discussed. One week will be local MPs giving their viewpoint, the next the current columnists. Word count will be around 250-300 words (I was writing 400, originally 500, with that full-page period at 1000), so greatly reduced. Disappointingly, I had to ask if they wanted a final column from me for this week, before the new section starts on Monday. I was hoping I'd have a chance to say a kind of goodbye after seven years of penning my column. But they didn't. So, just like that, I'm no longer a columnist. In case they said yes, I wrote a farewell piece, so, for old times sake, here it is: One last Friday feeling Seven years ago, I was wondering what to write...

Remember when mobile phones first appeared? Wow – you don’t look that old. The first civilian call was (kind of) made by Ernie Wise (yes, the short, fat, hairy-legged half of iconic comedy double-act Morecambe & Wise) on the 1st of January 1985. By the end of the decade, they were pretty common (phones, not Ernies), and now – well... try living without one. The model used by Ernie - a Transportable Vodaphone VT1, fact fans – cost about £2000. Ouch. Having said that, smartphones have been getting both progressively smarter and more expensive over the last decade or so. Roll back to 2010, and you’d have been pretty gobsmacked at the thought of paying £700 for a mobile. Now, the latest top-notch iPhone is in that expensive ball-park, and there’s more bad news for the bank account of anyone wanting the latest, smartest, tech. There’s a new kid on the block. The Samsung Galaxy Fold does what it says on the (alarmingly expensive) tin, and opens out to create one large screen, w...

Do you think your latte is a lotta money? Or your cappuccino needs a price cap? Spare a thought for Boston Tea Party (BTP), an independent coffee chain, who voluntarily banned single use cups last year. It was an expensive decision – to the tune of £250,000. From June 2018, the chain’s 22 stores decided to put planet before profit, and told their customers they had to bring a reusable cup, pay a deposit on one that they could return, or drink their hot beverage of choice in the branch. v A bold decision and one that has proven costly. Owner Sam Roberts realised this would happen, and included the loss in his plans. With normal annual sales of £1m worth of takeaway coffees, a 25% drop is a big hit for a relatively small organisation. Finding that offering 25p off for customers with their own reusable cup didn’t really work (just 5% showed up with cup), BTP decided to really go for it. Roberts has challenged the bigger chains to follow-suit, saying “We felt this was a financial ...

Two words can strike terror into the heart of any parent – School play. If you’re lucky, it’ll be a tolerable affair, with some half-decent acting and not too many fumbled lines, set disasters, or one of the actors falling down and/or throwing up. At their worst, they can feel like they’re going on for days, and you start to wonder if the drama teacher is deliberately trying to get themselves fired. The choice of play often doesn’t help. An earnest Shakespearian outing, Guys and Dolls with awkward faux-American accents, or an ill-advised performance of Grease, anyone? Thought not. A school in the US has upped the stakes somewhat, by performing an adaptation of scary 1979 sci-fi blockbuster, Alien. Yes, it had the chest-bursting junior alien scene, too. Originally starring Sigourney Weaver as tough-as-nails spaceship Nostromo warrant officer Ellen Ripley, the film did a fine job of scaring the hell out of cinema-goers. In the following four decades, the alien-slowly-wipes-ou...

I like things to be neat and tidy. Half the fun of playing with toys as a kid was making sure I’d packed them neatly away in the box afterwards. Take Monopoly; banknotes in denominational order, all the right way up and round. Property cards in the order they are around the direction of travel on the board (although I always had an existential crisis about the utility companies – mixed in with the streets, or grouped together as a set? I can feel my anxiety levels rising just thinking about it). Thankfully, I’m all grown up now, and if you’re presuming that my record collection is filed in alphabetical order of artist, then sub-ordered by year of release, and that I iron my underpants then you’re wrong. Only one of those is true. It’s comforting to know that it isn’t only other humans that have a need to keep things tidy. There’s a mouse near Bristol who seems to have taken it upon itself to keep Steve Mckears’ shed neat. After mixing up some bird seed, Steve was surprised ...

Formula 1 roars back into the lives of armchair motorsport fans this weekend, with the first race of 2019 taking place in Australia on Sunday. If you’ve paid up to watch the races on Sky, congratulations – you get all of the races live, and an extra Button too, with the former F1 champion, Jenson, joining their presenting line up. If, like me, you’ll be watching it on Channel 4... well, there’s less to be excited about. Only the British GP will be live, as a deal signed by former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone kicks in, giving Sky the rights to show all other races exclusively live in the UK. Instead, Channel 4 will have highlights only. Cue the tricky task of trying to avoid picking up your phone, turning on the laptop, or watching TV/listening to the radio for half a day after the race has finished, to try and avoid an unwelcome “and the winner was...” situation. Plus, some awkward late-night timeslots. Formula when..?! Sky’s big promo film also conspicuously used Fleetwood M...