grumpyf1

  When you need glasses for stuff in the distance and for reading, you know you’re getting old. I therefore declare myself ‘ancient’. I should probably have ‘Listed’ status. It’s been an interesting month, during which I’ve been both youthful and elderly. The younger me saw the new Star Trek film and got irrationally excited (I was wearing my Captain’s socks at the time). The older me had yet another birthday, went to the opticians, and had depressingly confirmed what I already suspected; I need more than just my regular distance glasses, I need some for close-up stuff too. Apart from my wedding ring, there’s nothing I wear more than my specs (unless a casual air of sarcasm with occasional notes of disdain and an underlying accent of discontentment is counted, obviously). I’ve had many over the years, and shocking photographic evidence exists: The gold framed, round, ‘Lennon’ specs; the gigantic plastic ‘Oh look, it’s the bloke out of 80s pop one hit wonder The Buggles’...

Sometimes, I'm amazed at how epic I am at being an idiot. This week was a brilliant example. On Wednesday night, I emailed my newspaper column to the North West Evening mail, ready to go in Friday's edition. Whilst at work on Thursday, I received a reply saying I hadn't attached anything. I'd like to say it was a technical glitch but, if I'm truly honest, it was just me being a spanner. An exchange of emails (including one suggesting I could try rewriting it from scratch) resulted in me emailing it when I got home (but delayed another 15 minutes by my laptop installing updates), but I will almost certainly have missed the folks who shoehorn my words into the paper. As it turns out, I just don't know if it made it... The Columns page on the NWEM website hasn't been updated for a week (which means my last column is still the most recent one listed), and I can't pick up the paper locally, so only get my copy by post on a Monday/Tuesday, or wheneve...

I often think this country is rather odd, and that it would be far better if I got to rule it. But what if there was a land I could rule? Now there is: Petieania has risen from the sea! A few years ago, the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay began to reveal a small patch where the tide was depositing, rather than washing away. Just outside Travis Perkins and The Ship Inn on the edge of Sandside, it has gradually grown to a point where it even has some tufts of grass growing on it’s young surface. After first observing it’s early attempt at forming a land-like appearance a few years ago, my visiting niece, Lucy, and I agreed that it should have a name, to give it a sense of purpose, as it battled the twice-daily eroding rampage of the incoming tide. Being an immensely selfish Uncle, it became Petieania, rather than Lucytania. It was agreed that it should be defended against invaders, but lacking an army, we decided that guard albatrosses (or albatri, as we concluded the plural s...

Staring at one of those spinning images on my computer screen, whilst something was loading (or was it? You’re never really sure, are you?), I started pondering how much of my life I’d spent doing just that. And it got me thinking. Of course, once upon a time, in the dim, distant, dark ages of computing (so any time prior to last year, then), a spinning loading image was a handy pointer that you had enough time to pop off and make a cuppa, do a spot of hoovering, and – depending upon the complexity of whatever it was trying to load – maybe even have lunch. Not now though. Things have moved so fast, that loading times have been dramatically reduced, so we need only spend seconds waiting. What was once considered miraculously brief is now considered more lethargic that anaesthetised sloth. But I’ve done the calculations, and I reckon I see that little spinning thing, in all it’s varied forms, at least a dozen times a day. Say... 5 seconds on average. That’s a minute a day. Doesn...

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...