The Grumpy Old Blog

It's happened before. It happened today. And as safe a bet as me not winning £3million on the lottery, it will happen again. I got the bus lunatic sitting beside me. It being the weekend, I couldn't hide behind the free Metro. I quickly drew my phone up to my ear to pretend I was in conversation with someone, but that didn't work. I tried to scowl like I was a mass murderer on day release from the Armley Hilton on the way back to my cell before I committed another heinous axe-murder crime. But all to no avail. Two people plus myself spread out downstairs on the bus, and he sits beside me. "Shame about Jimmy Savile!" he says. Plainly into current affairs, with such knowledge about Sir Jimmy who had died nine months previously. I was so busy trying to find a way of avoiding getting into a conversation that I made the huge error of judgement by replying "Yes". "And Ralph Richardson. And Burt Lancaster. And Benny Goodman." Oh my giddy a...

I had a rather nasty confrontation in my local supermarket this morning, just at a time when I didn't need one. It was a full-blown argument over a packet of paracetamol. Being middle-aged, I was convinced that I had the right to purchase. But the checkout assistant thought otherwise, and everything came to a grinding halt. I sought help. But in true supermarket tradition, their out-of-normal working hours trading habits - 24 hours a day opening or not - do not transcend to having help freely available before 8.30am or after 7pm. The assistant kept infuriatingly telling me "I needed authorisation". With only a decade to my old aged pension, I felt I did not “need authorisation”. Sadly, these self-service check-out machines don't listen. They're the things that supermarkets seem to insist replace the grumpy teenagers otherwise subsidising their huge student loans and who normally sit at the end of the conveyor belt and have perfected that stance so bel...