The Grumpy Old Blog

The spotlight, fame, autograph-giving, fortune, the high-life, in fact everything associated with stardom is about to come my way. Yes, I'm about to star on the lower screen of a TV advertisement for a deodorant as one of the 79% of 221 people surveyed who agreed. With their guff. Mitchum, the deodorant people, collared me in my local supermarket in connection with this potential fame-making opportunity. A nice looking young lady, clip-boarded, rather microclimatically clothed to make a man of my age look at her twice, with the added value of no tattoos and all her own, rather than a set of purchased, teeth. In exchange for the aforementioned spotlight, fame, autograph-giving, fortune and the high-life I was actually given a bottle of Mitchum roll-on deodorant, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I was asked a series of bland, tick-box questions (disguised as market research) about my deodorant-buying habits. I didn't have to lie to the aforementioned microclimaticall...

Well, to all my dear American friends, I have a suspicion you are shortly going to get the President you deserve. A slight saving grace is that the second term for President Obama has meant there is now not so much of a bar, but more of a skewer to be raised by his successor. On the one hand, one candidate seems to have a continual bad hair day, while the other enjoys a continual bad hair do. That the largest democracy in the world has to choose between Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, seems to make the human pot-noodle, Kim Jong-un, somewhat of an attractive proposition. Of course we in the UK can't talk. We are in the unenviable position of having a leader of Her Majesty's Opposition akin to a school teacher who, despite being a teacher for the past 30 years, decided some 30 years ago at the start of his teaching career that he hated children. One, for the first time in most of our living memories, who is not referred to as the "Honourable Leader o...

I can't stand drivers: . . . . who don't know and can't judge the width of their own car . . . . in front of me who swing out onto the other side of the road to turn left . . . . who leave huge gaps between cars on busy roads because they are so busy chatting/phoning/sleeping . . . . who leave it until the very last minute to indicate as they approach the junction you are waiting to pull out from . . . . at a T-Junction who sits there for hours waiting for the road to clear totally of any traffic, and that includes the truck half a mile down the road approaching from the left, and a car half a mile up the road approaching from the right . . . . at a T-Junction who doesn't a least try to nose out in busy traffic . . . . doing 52 mph in the centre lane of a relatively empty motorway . . . . in cars beside me in heavy traffic with all the windows open as they listen to some angry chap on their CD shouting to the backing of someone manufacturing self-assemb...

The internet gurus keep warning us that if we continue to use adblockers, it will break the internet. For those of you perhaps not too familiar with internet parlance, adblockers are little extensions you can add to your internet browser that run automatically to prevent intrusive and nearly-always unwanted advertisements popping up on your screen or when you are browsing the World Wide Web. You know the sort – those that pop-up for the accident claims you've never had accidents for each and  every time you type the letters “acc” of the word “accountancy” into your computer. When not using adblockers, as you go about your web searching, your social media meandering, or your visit to a real media site, big brother, who is of course watching you all the time, picks up what you are either searching for or looking at and, hey presto, a “relevant” advertisement pops up on your screen. It’s all quite clever really. Except there are only so many times you can be asked whether you h...

Local election day in the UK, where many Britons head off to the voting station to put an "X" beside the name of someone they don't know representing the political views of a party they know nothing about. And that's just the candidates. Just back myself from the high-tech plywood and nails that I believe is officially called a "polling booth". Plainly the local invigilator must have worked in a bank, as the little voting pencils were very technically Sellotaped to a piece of string in the booth. The iPad generation hasn't enveloped the political voting system just yet, despite many councillors spending vast sums of local council tax-payers money on iPads and Samsungs to assist with a larger screen to play Candy Crush on as they attend vital Council meetings. The local school kids have been kicked out of their play-school hall to accommodate this. I was bitterly disappointed that only four names appeared on the ballot paper, none of whom was ...

I’m not keen on tourist traps. I never have been.  But there is something so endearing about Whitby, the fishing town in North Yorkshire (well East Yorkshire really) that trades healthily on its Bram Stoker/Dracula roots and the somewhat famous Mermaid fish and chip restaurant. The Mermaid has long-since been equalled, if not now in some instances eclipsed by other fish and chip establishments in the town serving equally good fish and chips, although the town’s fish and chip legacy very much still remains somewhat with the Mermaid. There is now a plethora of cosy tea rooms, as well as shops selling the wonderful tat so often missing from our regular high streets – funny fruit bowls, freaky flowerpots and silly signs to hang on the bathroom door suggesting wild and wacky ways of warning people that your eldest son is in there flatulently on his mobile Facebook. And all reasonably-priced to boot. And there’s also the Captain Cook Maritime Museum. Perhaps it...

More news about the the trees being proposed for Prestwich village, which is a small suburb of Manchester not far from Blackburn, but thankfully for residents, inconveniently far enough away that people in Prestwich can easily avoid it. My contact in Bury Council (Sir Frederik Scuttle OBE DipEd PhD SFA WTF) informs me that their HR department invited famous hypnotist Paul McKenna in to the Council last week to provide "training" for union members, Green Party members and var ious green welly warriors, all of whom eat organic cardboard, recycle their bicycles and own allotments so far from home they have to drive in their often smoke-belching MOT-failures to get there. For reference, here is a picture of one of the "trees" they now "believe" are being planted. All potentially in the ground. And for those thinking of taking a cycle path through Prestwich. Take care! Be afraid. Be very afraid. You will find them and they will kill you. ...