• Home
  • MN Grenside
  • Contact

Subscribe to my weekly posts
Archives
  • May 2025 (1)
  • April 2025 (1)
  • March 2025 (1)
  • October 2024 (1)
  • September 2024 (2)
  • August 2024 (2)
  • July 2024 (1)
  • January 2024 (1)
  • December 2023 (1)
  • October 2023 (1)
  • September 2023 (1)
  • August 2023 (1)
  • July 2023 (4)
  • May 2023 (1)
  • April 2023 (2)
  • March 2023 (3)
  • January 2023 (2)
  • December 2022 (4)
  • November 2022 (3)
  • October 2022 (1)
  • September 2022 (2)
  • August 2022 (2)
  • July 2022 (3)
  • June 2022 (2)
  • May 2022 (3)
  • April 2022 (3)
  • March 2022 (4)
  • February 2022 (2)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • December 2021 (3)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (4)
  • September 2021 (1)
  • August 2021 (3)
  • July 2021 (3)
  • June 2021 (4)
  • May 2021 (3)
  • April 2021 (1)
  • March 2021 (4)
  • February 2021 (3)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (4)
  • November 2020 (2)
  • October 2020 (3)
  • September 2020 (3)
  • August 2020 (2)
  • July 2020 (2)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (3)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (4)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (3)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (3)
  • August 2019 (3)
  • July 2019 (1)
  • June 2019 (3)
  • May 2019 (2)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (2)
  • January 2019 (4)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (2)
  • October 2018 (3)
  • September 2018 (3)
  • August 2018 (3)
  • July 2018 (3)
  • June 2018 (3)
  • May 2018 (2)
  • April 2018 (2)
  • March 2018 (3)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (3)
  • December 2017 (5)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (3)
  • September 2017 (3)
  • August 2017 (4)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (2)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (3)
  • March 2017 (4)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (5)
  • November 2016 (3)
  • October 2016 (3)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (3)
  • June 2016 (3)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (5)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (4)
  • November 2015 (3)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (4)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (4)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (2)
Recent Posts
  • Remember to play safe, but where’s the fun in that?
  • Forget Border Control at Airports ... Where are the Fashion Police?
  • Oh Joy! A new travel torture
  • It’s all about kit
  • Michelin stars need to shine a light on their black holes of Calcutta
Categories
  • Animals/Pets
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts
  • Fasion Health & Beauty
  • Finance/Law
  • Food & Drink
  • Friends
  • Kids/Family/Relations
  • Life
  • Love
  • Politics
  • Sex
  • Sport
  • Technology
  • Travel/Nature
  • Uncategorised
  • Work
What drives you crazy?

Get in touch!

Want to know when I publish the next blog?

Get in touch!

See all posts for December2016

Complete Crystal Balls...

  • December 29, 2016
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Life
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

Am I making no forecasts for 2017? Last year due to a mad rush of alcohol to the brain I made a series of predictions for 2016. Had I predicted that Leicester City would win the Premier League in the UK (5, 000-1), Brexit (3-1) and President Trump (75-1), a modest US $100 bet would have won me more than enough money to stop this malarkey and live a life of contented idleness! I got just about everything wrong except Fox buying BSkyB. So I think this year I will give it a miss. The concept there is a predestined rhyme or reason to our life and the Universe, rather than everything that happens is random, is just human hope conquering logic. Staring at tea leaves, examining the creases on your hand or the choice of picture cards chosen randomly from a Tarot Deck seems a pretty haphazard way of finding out if the person you slept with at the office party still respects you or if you will pick out the right lotto numbers. It's the directly opposing views of thinking we have free will, yet wanting to know things are pre-ordained (and therefore prove we don't) that makes our obsession with knowing the future so conflicted.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will want to strangle the relatives

  • December 23, 2016
  • Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Life
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Do relatives take priority over anyone else at Christmas? Don't misunderstand me, I adore every branch, root and twig of my family. However I also love my dogs, a couple of classic cars, a Lalique mask, a nicely worn leather jacket, a teddy bear and some very dear friends. Yes all in different ways but it seems at Christmas family is often to the exclusion of all else. Now as a kid I used to find it fairly amusing to meet up with Uncle Tuppy (yup, swear that was his name), Great Aunt Alice, Aunty Sheila and others who now are long gone and no doubt pulling crackers and swilling port in heaven. However as we really only came together once a year the novelty value soon wore off and I thought they were all bonkers and I am sure they felt I was some snot nosed brat (none of the aforementioned had kids). A brief lunch maybe but to stay manacled together for three or four days is a recipe for Lizzie Borden-like hungering for an axe! Distant relatives are like fish. After three days they go off. Christmas is a time of good will towards all men but to achieve that maybe put a time limit on each person? My American cousins are lucky as they have a Christmas doppelgänger a month earlier in Thanksgiving. That is the big family get together, always on a Thursday (see why Click Here). They get that out of the way and have the choice at Christmas to go away, be with friends or again link up the family tree.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

The Digital Water Cooler and the End of Suburbia

  • December 18, 2016
  • Life Technology Uncategorised Work
  • View all 2 Comments
Why...

Actually go to work? As some of you know, a while back I hightailed it out of the UK to settle in Malta. Contrary to popular belief this was not to retire and endlessly gargle drinks with little umbrellas in them and discuss the good old days with expats and people in Witness Protection. It was to set up a digital business; a revolutionary App that makes language learning fun. LingoZING! (www.lingozing.com) uses the visual storytelling of digital comics and graphic novels with an interactive multi language interface. Basically you can hear and read in two languages switching between the two with an onscreen slider. The actual App goes live in January 2017 but you can get a glimpse on Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/446245694/lingozing-the-fun-way-to-learn-a-language?ref=recommended) One of the early meetings with a friend (and now investor) started with: "Why should I invest in a company whose people are spread across the globe like so many ticks on a dog's back?" "Coz these ticks bite 18 hours a day, " I snapped back faster than knicker elastic. You see we have a team in Bulgaria, two of us are in Malta, the CFO in South Africa, the CTO in San Diego and marketing people in the USA, France and Brazil.  So in the highly unlikely event of anyone working only eight hours, there is someone working 18 out of 24 hours a day. That's pretty impressive for a start up with low overheads. We of course are not the only disparate group of people all bound by the same digital umbilical cord rather than being anchored to the office water fountain. Connectivity comes from phone, email, SMS, Skype or Zoom. However I feel no less of a homogenous whole than if we were all crammed into expensive office space. In fact it's better. Sure occasionally you take a Skype call at a ridiculous time in the night with a shirt and tie on top but still in dressed below in sweat pants!  I have no commute and the coffee is excellent. My computer screen is the Alice Through the Looking Glass that binds me to my friends and colleagues.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Slow...slow...quick quick...slow...you don't know how to walk

  • December 9, 2016
  • Fasion Health & Beauty Life
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Has the basic action of putting one foot in front of the other become obsessively scrutinised? In the not too distant past we had Neolithic man....let's call him Uggg.  After he has dragged his wife by the hair around the cave as foreplay before some prehistoric love-making, he ventures outside with his trusty club to find dinner. "Just popping out for a bite, dear." It was a toss-up in fact who would be dinner, Uggg the caveman or Tiddles from next door, the local sabre tooth tiger. This is not quite on a par with you or me popping down to Tesco's for a microwave chicken korma and a six pack of Aussie beer. (Neither of which you actually eat, just rent.) Apart from his club, loincloth, toothless grin and a few fleas, Uggg took nothing else with him. The intrepid Tesco visitor if he came on foot would have a Day-Glo jacket, mobile phone and in case he died from thirst or hunger on the long trek from Acacia Avenue to the supermarket, a bottle of water and an energy bar. That seems a little excessive even for the suburbs (unless it's Texas where you would rather walk naked than without your two friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson).

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Light bulbs. The devil's own testicles!

  • December 3, 2016
  • Fasion Health & Beauty Life Technology
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

Is the simple light bulb really the work of Beelzebub? Whenever a lightbulb goes 'ping' in my house, my whole day gets dimmer. Bayonet, screw in, full width, half width, 40 watt, 60 watt, clear, pearl.... pointless and endless variations.....yet on top of all that nonsense I now have to deal with eco friendly bulbs. These are a giant stride backwards. Firstly they are all fugly (f*cking ugly). The shape looks like Mr Whippy has poohed a glass. I guarantee Thomas Edison's prototype got brighter quicker. These new things need an eon to warm up before on full beam. It's like going back to old cathode ray tube tv's. I used to turn those on, go make a cup of tea, have a cigarette, a wee and when I came back my TV was just flickering into life. Eco bulbs.That's progress like saying a cannibal uses a knife and fork! However the palaver of changing normal bulbs pales compared to swapping out a halogen ceiling light. There are more variations how these little bastards screw into the ceiling than excuses Justin Bieber gives for speeding. Firstly as I try and get the inner socket out, ceiling plaster always gives my head a nice quasi-dandruff coating. Next, whichever catch spring or twisting technique Torquemada the builder fitted, the burnt out bulb clings to the socket like a slinky twenty year old Russian to a fat billionaire. So then I make the mistake of grabbing the bulb which is hotter than Satan's underpants and I a) burn my fingers, b) drop the bulb to the ground where it smashes. I try and reverse the whole procedure fitting a replacement. Another dusting of plaster this time in my eyes so I'm half blind as I try and screw the new one in. After wrestling with the fixture until I get neck camps I eventually get the bulb in...only to turn the thing on and discover it's not the bulb but the transformer that's bust. Frankly I'd rather use the man who invented these things as a human candle than have to change another.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

What is rss? "rss" is about getting live web feeds
directly to your computer.