grumpyf1

“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 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 Considering the number of smokers back then, it would be easy to assume that cigarettes had now been replaced by people carrying small bags of dog poo around. 2018 featured an awful lot of meals with pea shoots on them, for no discernible reason.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...

Why oh why would anyone not like little Donny? Apparently, chief Oompa-Loompa of the USA, Donald Trump, has no limit to his paranoia. This week, he’s declared that Google are “left-wing” when it comes to search results for “Trump News”. By this, he means that they are being rigged so that the vast majority are negative. Wow. Google have understandably denied this (not the negative bit, but that any political viewpoint is used in the complex algorithm that decides what to bung in front of you when you type something in that little box in your browser). Analysts have pointed out that extra weight is probably given to pages that a lot of other people linked to. There’s no point in asking Google that, though. If they explained that appearing higher in search results could be achieved by putting ice cubes down your pants, there would be a simultaneous water, electricity and freezer shortage as everyone in charge of a website attempted to cram extra frozen water into their underwea...

Yes, I’ll admit it took me a long time to come up with that Bohemian Rhapsody-based headline, following two stories vying for my attention this week. First up, we have the latest victim in the greatest/strangest reality show on the planet, hosted by that zany guy with the overly-long tie, Donald “You’re Fired!” Trump. Maybe we could call it White House Big Bother? Since getting himself comfy in the Oval Office’s chair, the President has been busily increasing the unemployment level of the USofA by firing people so quickly, some of them probably hadn’t even had sufficient time to being their own mug in and figure out how many sugars everyone else had. I bet there’s hardly a day goes by without another “Sorry you’re leaving” card doing the rounds. Acting attorney general, Sally Yates, managed 10 days of employment before getting the boot – I’ve had colds that lasted longer than that. Michael Flynn was, briefly, national security adviser for a mammoth 23 days – a timeframe shor...

I don’t want to spoil your dinner if you’re trying to avoid Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President.  But if you’ve just fired up the cooker to warm up some baked beans, the fact that they’re shiny and orange won’t help. In case you’ve somehow failed to notice, ‘The Donald’ gets the keys to the White House today, much to the immense bewilderment of a large chunk of the UK. Putting to one side whether he’s actually suitable for the job (tricky, I know), I’ve been amused and appalled (in roughly equal measures) by his petulant outbursts on Twitter, as well as in the flesh. He does seem intent on offending and alienating as many people as possible, doesn’t he? It took me a while to figure it out, but I think I’ve finally nailed who he reminds me of. He is every tired, grumpy, little brother, added together. When you try to say he’s trodden mud into the house, he responds with “No YOU trod it in, and you should clean it up! Dirty!” Or you point out that there’s an unpl...

The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...