grumpyf1

Is it still light out?  Well, enjoy it while you can because at the weekend gloom time arrives, and there’s nothing we can do about it until Spring. If you were looking for a nice, cheery, introduction, then you’re in to the wrong place. For the next four months or so, I’m declaring this column a sanctuary for those affected by WIMPEY (Winter Irritates Me Practically Every Year) Syndrome. For fellow sufferers, the impending clocks-going-backness that occurs this weekend is a depressing alarm call, ringing in the debilitating fact that it’ll be dark at 5pm until March, Halloween is lurking ominously round the corner in a cheap mask from Tesco, and it’s mere days away from the Daily Mail carrying a “Weather Bomb/Worst Winter For a Generation” headline to make us feel even more forlorn. Thanks to the brilliant decision to shove the clocks back by an hour, those afflicted by the unfortunate problem of a 9-5 job will no longer get to see the beautiful autumn colours. No, thank...

Autumn: The season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, and idiots using their car’s lights inappropriately again. Pretty much as soon as the cold weather descended, and the evenings started to draw in alarmingly fast, we had the delight that is drivers on our roads with a selfish streak, or possibly just a complete lack of brains. On a splendid run along the A591 on Monday (you remember Monday – it was the one with all the wind and rain) before daylight had bothered to show up, I found myself squinting blearily at the dazzling lights ahead of me. Had I taken a wrong turning in my pre-cappuccino befuddlement, and arrived on the front at Blackpool at lighting up time? Had the sun gone into supernova, leaving me with just minutes before the end of the universe (and ready access to a cappuccino)? Can I please just have a cappuccino? No. Despite the fact that the sky was depositing an inch of rain in the space of a couple of hours (so that’s where it all went!), the person in front ...

Feel that sudden chill in the air? It’s winter, heading this way. Or you’ve left the fridge door open. One of those, definitely. According to people with the word ‘meteorologist’ somewhere in their job title, it has been the driest September since records began. Hardly surprising, really – the wettest winter on record immediately beforehand almost certainly used up all the available rain in the sky early (Note to self: check the sciencey stuff, it doesn’t sound quite right). With just 20% of the normal rainfall of the most Septembery of months, 2014 trounced the previous record holder, good old 1959. Whilst this may have led to less plump courgettes, and parched blue tits mugging you for your bottle of mineral water, it does have a beneficial side-effect: Your granddad will finally have to stop saying “Dry? You don’t know what dry is! When I were but a lad...” Clearly disappointing for grandpops, especially so soon after the “Wet winter? Pah! When I were but a lad...” sto...

Thanks, Mother Nature. After a tantalising taste of sunshine and warmth over the weekend, Bank Holiday Monday was, once again, wetter than a goldfish’s living room. Still, it wasn’t a complete waste of an otherwise perfectly good Monday, was it? Being British, some of us will have attempted to soldier on determinedly, whilst muttering “It’s just a bit of rain! Come on, it’ll be fun!” and hoping that someone would believe us, or at least go along with it for a bit. I reckon there is a good case for turning our Bank Holiday mud bath into a fun game for all the family though. So I’ve come up with some categories for Bank Holiday Top Trumps. Who can score the highest in each category? How exciting! 1) Car Boot Sales turned into a less amusing version of ‘It’s A Knockout’ by the weather, with people desperately trying to sell a bunch of rusting tools, kids clothes, radio cassette players, VHS tapes and Beezer Annuals from 1974, whilst attempting to stay upright with water flung a...

I’ve carried out a long and careful analysis of all available data (well, I’ve looked on twitter for 20 minutes – that counts, right?) and I’ve concluded that we should cancel the rest of 2012. Who’s in? Let us consider, in a calm and rational way, why this is a good idea. We’ve had some pretty good stuff this year so far, culminating recently in the Olympics which, much to many people’s surprise, was actually rather splendid (As long as you take George Michael’s new single at the closing ceremony out of the equation). It turns out that we surprised ourselves by quite liking the Queen, during her jubbly year, too (or whatever it was called). I’ve reached my shocking cancellation conclusion after we suffered yet another rank Bank Holiday weekend in Cumbria, bringing the number of days ruined by excessive precipitation in 2012 to... well, most of them, actually. What have we got to look forward to for the rest of the year, then..? Precisely. Not a lot. Except for a load more...

To say that the British Grand Prix weekend was a bit rain-affected is rather like saying Dappy from N-Dubz is a little bit irritating. So wet was it, that officials asked 20,000 people, loyally heading in the direction of Silverstone, to stay away on Saturday. The theory was, this would give them more chance of getting stuck in mud on Sunday instead. It worked. Q1 was accompanied by light rain, sufficient enough to mean DRS wasn’t allowed. To add to the trickiness, Raikkonen’s KERS wasn’t working either, and as it’s generally best not to fiddle with electrical cables in the wet, he was forced to compete without the extra boost. Luckily for him, worse weather was heading Silverstone’s way, allowing his team ample time to don the rubber gloves and pile in to fix it. As conditions deteriorated, spins became the order of the day, causing Button, who was once again looking to be in trouble, to have to back off on his final attempt, as Glock narrowly avoided the wall on the pit stra...

OK, so the football was a shambles. And the tennis is probably heading the same way, and Andy Murray will stop being British and become Scottish again. Good job there is a sport we ARE good at – Formula 1. This weekend sees the British Grand Prix take place at Silverstone, and there’s a very good chance that the winner will be British too. Sort of. There are 3 Brits in F1 at the moment – Lewis Hamilton (former World Champion, complains a lot, has earrings and a silly beard, hangs out with Nicole Shirtzingler), Jenson Button (former World Champion, affable, scruffy beard, currently wondering why he’s driving so badly, nice model girlfriend) and Paul di Resta (newish, young, sounds like he’s been programmed by his team, quick, girlfriend not obviously hanging around in back of garage). Hamilton or Button have a pretty good chance of winning, di Resta less so. They’re up against the classiest field for years, with 4 other World Champions , Alonso (Spanish, only one, big, eyebr...