grumpyf1

I sn’t it comforting to know that, despite all the negative publicity, complaints and anger, some of our largest companies are still arrogant enough to put the customer last? T he energy company at the centre of my story has successfully maintained a track record of coming last in customer satisfaction surveys. I should have guessed further errors were on the cards, after a couple of previous foul-ups had left me baffled as to how anyone could think what they were doing was acceptable. S ure – when you first buy a house and sign-up with the utility firm, they aren’t going to know how much gas you’re going to gobble, or electricity you’ll eat through. After a few years, it seems reasonable to assume they would now have enough data to know that if they needed to vary your direct debit payments, it should only be by a few quid to balance things out. N ot my supplier. 8 years into our ‘relationship’, I’ve had refunds after it turned out I’d massively overpaid, then had my payment ...

3 years ago this very week, the winner of the North West Evening Mail’s “Big Blogger” contest was announced, and I’m delighted to say... it wasn’t me! I received a Direct Message on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that startled me greatly. It’s OK though – it turns out it was a mistake and @BigTrish66 isn’t going to scratch my eyes out for looking at her boyfriend. I then received an even more startling message than the first, from fellow columnist Darren McSweeney, giving me the heads-up that he was about to announce his retirement from columnising (or whatever the official word is for what we do each week) for this fine paper. Swirling back through the mists of time to the 9th of April 2012, it’s possible to make out two handsome and highly intelligent bloggeristas, who had successfully seen off a large field of competitors in the equivalent of a weekly blogging smack-down, to reach the head to head final. (In case you were wondering, I’m referring to me and Darren. Obviously....

Happy 99th birthday, BST! Being confused as to whether your clock should spring forwards or fall backwards is nothing new, but why do it at all? Last weekend saw the clocks go forward by an hour, depriving us of one forty-eighth of our weekend, and ensuring a sizeable percentage of the UK’s oven clocks are now wrong for the next six months. We’ve been fiddling about with our time in a non-Doctor Who kind of way for almost a century, and since 1995 have agreed that, along with straight bananas, all of Europe does exactly the same thing at the same point. You say tom-AY-toes, I say Central European Summer Time. When William Willet suggested the complex idea of moving the clocks forward by 80 minutes in 20 minute Sunday increments during April, he was presumably unaware that his impending demise would mean he never got to see the benefits of extra light in the evenings. Much of this would probably have been lost resetting all the clocks though, so what we finally got was a 60 m...

Pop-a-doodle-doo, pop picklers! What a sen-say-tional bit of news we go this week – they’re moving the day of the Chart Show! For at least the first half of The Eighties, there was only one place you’d find me between 5 and 7 on a Sunday evening. You’re probably thinking; “What? A guy that cool and sophisticated, with such natural good looks and obvious charm? Probably at the front of the queue for a trendy night club. Or maybe partying with stars. Or rescuing kittens stuck in trees. Definitely one of those, right?” Thanks for that, but no – I’m afraid you’re incorrect. I would be in the bath. Hitting the bathroom so that the water had stopped running just as the pips announced it was 5pm, I would then top up with extra hot water at regular intervals, and pull the plug out with a couple of minutes to go before 7. Yes, I was a smelly teenager, but hygiene wasn’t the reason (as my favourite baseball boots would have willingly attested to anyone brave enough to go near them). I w...

For a TV show about cars, the BBC’s Top Gear has managed to get an awful lot of people hot under the bonnet. Even those who don’t know their RS from their E-Type. Some say he has more lives than cat, and will stroll back on to our screens with a stupid grin before we can say “Power!” very loudly whilst wearing a leather jacket. Others that he is a preposterous, out-of-date buffoon, who has no place on modern TV. All we know is - he’s called Jeremy. Jeremy Clarkson is, in case you haven’t been out from under your rock for a while, star host of Top Gear, a show ostensibly about cars, but in reality a three-way male menopause featuring “Jezza” and his two mates crashing things, blowing up stuff, being cheeky and driving some very costly cars like they’ve stolen them. Ironically, they wouldn’t need to do that as the show has made all of them (and the BBC) very, very, rich. Whilst the laddish behaviour and fooling about prods the annoyance button for many, the programme has point...

It may only feel like last week that the Formula 1 season finished but, after a break so short the engines are probably still warm, it’s back this weekend. Much has happened off-track during the ever-decreasing winter break, including World Champion Lewis Hamilton winning the BBC TV Sports Personality of the Year award and having photos of himself plastered all over his Twitter account looking moody, stylish, and fashionable in shots so posed you could get a couple of quick laps of Monaco in whilst his entourage figured out if the lighting was flattering enough. The Caterham and Marussia teams went bust, got resurrected, went into receivership, were having their assets auctioned off (which sounds painful) , being brought out, saved, optimistic about the future and doomed, and all that before Christmas. The end result is that Caterham didn’t make it, whilst Marussia are now Manor and ready to roll with a hastily altered car from last year. Assuming the paint has dried in time, and...

It’s warming up nicely, isn’t it? Soon, the cold of winter will be just a distant memory. But for me, the penguin (much like Celine Dion’s heart) will go on... Whilst this weekend looks set to witness a temperature in Centigrade containing two digits for the first time in ages, last Sunday featured some sudden snow storms and general chilliness. Timing my walk to perfection, I was part way up Arnside Knott when the snow came down soft and fast. I soon found myself in a small bubble of visibility, eerie silence, extreme slipperiness and a facial sensation that I imagine is like an ice bucket challenge on endless loop. Despite the multiple layers of clothing and my usual, disgruntled demeanour, something deep inside me stirred. Cold, worried about slipping over, face stinging from the horizontal assault of iciness, the grumpy me battled momentarily with a deeply buried sensation before losing altogether, as my inner 10 year old joyously delighted at this sight of heavy snow fall...