The Grumpy Old Blog

Do you remember when: - Christmas festivities, the switch on of lights, the putting up of Christmas trees and the arrival on Santa was on 6th December, Saint Nicholas Day - the first two weeks of January were completely Valentine Card free - comedians on TV didn't swear - a world without Greta Thunberg - a world without airport security - you didn't need an Equity card to be a professional wrestler - Bohemian Rhapsody set the bar to reach for popular songwriting - people had to speak English correctly to get a job on TV - you had to go out to get a takeaway - there was no ITVbe or Metro 'newspaper' - people used only "he" or "she" to describe other people - Christmas TV was watchable - people didn't use "super" as their sole adjective - there were no soshul influenzers - people didn't say "I follow him/her (him/her being an otherwise useless, self-publicising nonentity) on Instagram - drivers of Mercedes and BMW's used the...

I had a flashback to some 25 years ago when I worked in Guiseley, a small town just south of Otley (famous for Thomas Chippendale) in the Leeds Metropolitan Borough. It is famed for being the origin and headquarters of the world-famous Harry Ramsden's fish and chips, at one time "the world's biggest fish and chip restaurant" and connected to the parents of Harry "Sooty, Sweep and Sue" Corbett (as well as Silver Cross Prams, Shires Bathrooms, Greenwood's Menswear, Compton Lighting and Wendy Wools). On one occasion I was in the then recently built, and at the time, flagship Morrison's Supermarket, a flagship to the extent that Sir Ken Morrison regularly turned up to service behind the deli counter. On that day, I was in the cash-out queue behind a young mother with her twin children in a double buggy (yes, it was a fine, locally-made, Silver Cross double-buggy!). Now bearing in mind this was before the digital revolution that now sees most young moth...

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We have all, at some time, achieved greatness and magnificence through hindsight. We have obtained CBE's, OBE's and other wonderful accolades, been to afternoon tea with H M the Queen and even appeared on the BBC's One Show, all without the necessity of lowering ourselves to being a useless, snivelling, senior public-sector executive. All thanks mainly to hindsight. Well not really. I just like having a go at the pathetic honour-chasers (we all know one of those in either local government or a local voluntary organisation don't we? You know the sort - does none of the work but grabs all of the glory). Had I the Tardis, (you know, the Time and Relative Dimension in Space machine Dr Who drives around Time in - saves a fortune in parasite, er, I mean parking fees), I could return and correct some of the great errors of my ways  -  through hindsight. Most I wont mention here, as being of the plain stupidity and male pride type, I don...