Catch up

Well this is going to be a relatively short blog (hopefully uploaded first time of writing)  following up on two recent postings. The first concerned a hopeless Xmas lunch we had at a local pub/restaurant where the management had invited us to a complementary second meal to showcase their real capabilities. Ooh would it prove to be A1 or just OK or NFG again? The second was all about my continuing hopeless relationship with technology  and yet another visit to the Genius bar at my local Apple store in Kingston. Would they be able, a la Chris Martin, to ‘fix me’ and my lovely but sick iMac desktop? Or would I find myself contemplating jumping off the top floor of the Bentalls store car park in desperation at losing all my personal and business data, unbacked-up for the last 5 years? Well I guess you can tell I didn’t jump but was it a happy ending?

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Who’s up for the Cup?

[Sorry folks this is my second attempt to load this posting and, frustratingly, it’s meant yet another re-write. This is not the first time this has happened so I’m just trying to find out and rectify whatever the problem is. I hope this re-draft does justice to the original!  Yours, Mr Bloody Angry of Teddington]    

Well not many Premiership teams it seems. This week-end I went with my two great grandsons and son-in-law S to watch Milton Keynes Dons trounce Premiership (just about) side QPR away 4-2. We’re just nestled behind that melee of MK Dons players celebrating their second goal, as were we! MK Dons is the boys’ nearest League club and my eldest grandson’s in their Academy srtucture . This was too good an opportunity to miss as QPR are relativlely close to where we live in SW London.  Despite being two Divisons apart I  have to tell you it wasn’t even a close contest; QPR were simply out thought, outplayed and out of ideas. Was it a fluke result?

OK what would you spend your best £20m on….?

Time for something a bit more uplifting I think. So, picture the scene (and it’s one that we’ve all fantasized about I suspect); you win £200m on the Euro lottery and you’re thinking about how to spend/invest it all. Ah choices, choices. Here’s the twist, just suppose one of the conditions is that a 10% chunk of the prize has to be spent on a single thing. What would it be for you?

Can we look forward to Ricky Gervais blacking up next?

I used to like watching Ricky Gervais enormously. ‘The Office’ was a brilliant concept and the follow up ‘Extras’ was  extraordinarily ambitious and funny too, when the humour was self-deprecating and aimed very much at his own character Andy Millman or his close circle of hapless associates or when he was pricking the pomposity of his celebrity guests. But to me it became rather uncomfortable viewing when the focus of the humour was re-directed away from the fame-hungry and towards some easier targets like the Down’s boy in the restaurant, the girl with celebral palsy, the dwarf actor and perhaps even the outrageously camp  BBC tv producer of Andy’s programme ‘When the whistle blows’, in the second series.

Cakes

I need to get a new posting up on the site. Despite writing like the original grumpy old man I somehow seem to have acquired a decent audience amongst female readers and if I do a football posting, like the last one, my visitor numbers dip alarmingly. It’s a shame because I’m a passionate footie fan but clearly the views of ex-pro pundits and on dedicated football sites are far more interesting. Fair enough so it’s back to metrosexual subjects and today’s is baking. Ooh controversial.

Football management

Yesterday I read an interview with ex-pro Tony Adams in the Independent. I think it was his way of putting himself in the shop window but unwittingly I think it underlined why no chairman has thought it worth offering him a managerial job in the English football system more significant than boss of Wycombe Wanderers and a short spell at Portsmouth when they were on the slide. He spent some time criticising the salary policy at Arsenal arguing that their parsimony over wages (this in the week that Theo Walcott has been awarded a new contract worth around £20m over 3.5 years) has led to the exodus of key players. His key thought was that all the money that Arsenal received from their run in the Champions League last year, around £25m, should have been paid to Robin van Persie to encourage him  to stay at the club. You’ve gotta think that club Chairmen might look at that and think ah here we have an intelligent and forthright man of the game whose first instinct is to channel all of a club’s revenue into the pockets of already overpaid current footballers. Hey let’s give Tony a call and see if he fancies managing our club. It’s not going to happen is it?

The end of high street UK? Not necessarily.

Well I thought I’d posted this earlier but no it went into the ether never to be seen again, so, frustratingly, here’s my second version….. Have you heard this one? An HMV voucher’s not just for Xmas; it’s for life. Ha ha! But it’s not so amusing if you’re one of the poor buggers who received them for Xmas and cannot now redeem them. Nor is it funny for the even poorer souls who spent good money buying these as presents and they are now worthless (I think there should be a law against companies simply declaring these things as unredeemable without any notice period). And it’s even less amusing if you are one of the 1000’s of unlucky sods who face unemployment now after working their rocks off up to and through the hectic Xmas period. How must that feel? Happy 2013 to all staff eh.

modern times….part 3

Well this is the third and final part of the trilogy into contemporary life, as seen through the eyes of someone whose favourite footwear is his slippers and who remembers when fast connectivity meant a Meccano starter kit.