grumpyf1

Much like Doctor Who, I am able to travel in time... but only backwards. And only by an hour. And I don’t have a glamorous assistant. Other than that, it’s exactly the same. I discovered this amazing ability recently, when attempting to watch some TV programmes I’d recorded a few weeks ago. At first, I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Everything looked the same, and even my cappuccino was still pleasantly hot (not to mention pleasingly frothsome). But something was definitely different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Bewildered, I began to wonder if I had inadvertently triggered a rip in the space-time continuum, possibly by eating all those mushy peas. But, unlike a particularly daft episode of Star Trek, no strangely bearded version of me stared back from my mirror. Unless you count the fact that I am strangely bearded - in which case, I fully expect to find the evil version of Spock hiding in my underwear drawer, next time I need fresh pants. And then it struck me, ...

Monday (sponsored by Coke) March 15th, 2053. Dear KindleDiary – today we visited the “High Street”, which was like, totes amazeballs, as I haven’t left the house since Googleuary! It was our annual VirtuaSchool day out, so they said we had to leave our home (which was, like, really weird and that) and catch a Hoverbus to High Street to see how people lived back in the old days. I was totally GaGa’d by it, although I didn’t see loads of it, as I had to make sure I kept an eye on my FaceTwit, in case someone posted a vidz of an amusing cat, or said something that made me LOL. There were Giraffes and stuff wandering around these abandoned buildings, which were sort of like distribution centres, but people actually used to visit them to buy stuff. I. KNOW. Completely Bieber, isn’t it?! Apparently, back then you couldn’t see everything instantly on the tubes, so people actually went out EVERY DAY to look at things, before buying them. Losers! Once the Zoos closed, because eve...

Monday lunchtime was fairly usual: Eat tiny salad out of plastic box (pining for the days when it was cake instead), look out of window, surf the web. Then twitter told me Margaret Thatcher had died. Twitter is truly fascinating when major news stories break. My timeline was first filled with brief ‘Thatcher dead’ messages, then more descriptive (as far as you can be in 140 characters) ones from news sources, followed by a flurry of something unexpected: People warning other twitter users against being unkind or cruel, pointing out that, whatever your political persuasion, this was someone’s relative, a fellow human being, and urging others to show respect. I don’t follow everyone on twitter (I imagine all those cat pictures would overload my 5 year old laptop somewhat) but, judging from some of the vitriolic and overtly political tweets I’ve seen, the folks whose timelines I do view represent a spectacularly broad spectrum when it comes to party allegiances (not to mention what co...

...it’s a sentence. I’ve just happily served the first 20 years of mine, and don’t require an early release either. There certainly hasn’t been much good behaviour. To celebrate the remarkable levels of patience and resilience this has required of the ever lovely Mrs G, we are currently residing in a cottage, just over the border in the Yorkshire Dales. Everything currently smells of sausages and woodsmoke, but we won’t go into that right now, just in case the owners are reading this and recognise my name. I’m sure it’ll have worn off by about June. Having recently enjoyed a roast beef, fried onion and horseradish sauce sandwich I’d gladly have traded my soul for (it’s not worth much – I work in Marketing), I’m now reflecting on 20 happy years of marriage, and we’ve figured out that around 82 days of that have been spent drinking cappuccinos, and a very similar amount of time has involved me standing in shops, nodding thoughtfully at another item of clothing being tried on and sa...

I had the house to myself last Friday night. Like all normal men, I went wild and spent the evening listening to remixes and different versions of the BBC News 24 music on Youtube. That isn’t normal? Ah. Well, maybe not for you, but that beep beep beep rhythmic music, slowly building to its higher-pitched ten second crescendo is the reason I’m in front of the TV at two minutes to ten every night, in the hope of catching it in all its stirring glory. I’m reasonably distraught if they only get time for the last twenty seconds, or they commit the ultimate sin and fade it, right before Huw Edwards stares intently at you for a few seconds, whilst sporting another natty tie and that slightly sinister sneer. Imagine my shock when I tuned in the other night... and they’d changed it. I don’t remember receiving a letter asking for my permission. The very least they could have done was give me a bit of warning, so I had time to prepare myself. Suddenly, it’s got synth-string bits going on....

I’m reasonably tough. Not wrestle-a-bear-to-save-the-damsel tough, but a bit better than burst-into-tears-at-the-sight-of-a-spider wussy. Just about, anyway. I’d fight you to prove it, but to be honest, that sounds a bit scary, and I’d probably lose. Last Saturday I came into contact with the most terrifying noise in the world ever. More alarming than, well, an alarm – even an alarmed alarm. More horrifying than someone saying “Your round? Great, I’ll have a triple whatever that really expensive whiskey is”. Louder than 50 Barry Scott’s trying to push their Cillit Bang on you. More piercing than Concorde flying in one ear and out of the other. I went to my nearly-nine (she is now) year old niecelet Rebecca’s birthday party. There were 20+ under 10s, largely of the female variety. If that sounds pretty scary straight off, someone had done the unthinkable, and added water. Much like those film critter Gremlins, mixing children with water, in this case a swimming pool, causes them t...

Whilst that impossibly young German chap Sebastien Vettel won a 3rd straight title in his Red Bull rocket-on-wheels last year, he had his toughest battle for the title so far, which sets us up really rather nicely for a high octane blast around Melbourne on Sunday. 2014 sees seismic changes to the F1 rulebook, involving much smaller engines, dramatically less fuel available, all sorts of clever-clogs energy recovery shenanigans, turbos, and the possibility that the familiar scream of the cars flat out might sound more like as asthmatic wasp in a particularly large tin. Before that, we get to see if Fernando Alonso can finally get a title in his Ferrari and tame his eyebrows, if Jenson Button can do the same as the main man at McLaren whilst continuing to be extremely laid back, if Lewis Hamilton has a chance now he’s swapped to Mercedes and started getting tattoos and dressing like a ‘gangsta’, or if any of the other peddlers of the world’s most expensive go karts can do the sa...