The Grumpy Old Git thread.

[JoceAndChris]

And yes, the ball gown above is the sort of thing I will be expecting.

 

[Moo]

Smoking is so elegant, I've always had a sneaking admiration. The jackets, the holders, the kiss shape of the lips- oh!

The crowsfeet, the wrinkled upper lip caused by a lifetime of kiss-shapes .......

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh but the airy action of the wafting hands, the blue drifts of smoke, the lingering smell of manly tobacco - it's so romantic!

 

[MdB]

Oh but the airy action of the wafting hands, the blue drifts of smoke, the lingering smell of manly tobacco - it's so romantic!

Sorry. No.


The exact opposite in fact.

 

[Flyfisher]

Smoking is like playing Russian Roulette with 3 loaded chambers - if you smoke, there is a 50% chance that your cause of death will be directly attributable to your smoking. It is also likely to be a more debilitating and protracted cause of death (COPD, cancer, CV disease, etc etc) than otherwise.

Who was it who said "there is no vice worth foregoing for the sake of an extra six months in an old folks home"?

Having said that, my experience with furtive cigarettes behind the school bike sheds only served to make me feel sick and I never tried them again - something that must have saved me many thousands of pounds over the years.

 

[Feltwell]

Smoking is so elegant, I've always had a sneaking admiration. The jackets, the holders, the kiss shape of the lips- oh!

The crowsfeet, the wrinkled upper lip caused by a lifetime of kiss-shapes .......

Yep - watching my colleagues huddled shivering in a plastic hut in the corner of the car park getting their fix, coming back in the office stinking to high heaven of stale fags, the 2 women in their 40's who have skin that looks at least 20 years older than they are, the man from the warehouse with yellow stained fingers and bad breath - very elegant!

One of my enduring childhood memories is the horror of being stuck in a car on a long journey with 2 parents who both smoked, and who thought that opening the window an inch was enough to stop it affecting anyone else. Times have most definitely changed for the better - neither of them smoke now, but even if they did they would not dream of smoking anywhere near children. Attitudes have moved on a lot. I suppose they did me a favour, they put me off smoking for life long before the health risks started being publicised.

Anyway - feeling very grumpy this evening. Firstly, nice Victorian villa next-door-but-one has had a visit from the UPVC men - original arch topped sashes, in need of only minor repair, have gone. Plastic rectangular windows with a crude bit of trim fixed to the top to fill the arch have replaced them. Sacrilege - at this rate it will only be my house left in this road with original fenestration.

Secondly, I'm going away camping tomorrow and it's bloody raining. A lot.

Thirdly, said volume of rain has highlighted that one of the rooflights in my new garage is leaking, which will probably mean me having to fork out for scaffolding to get at it to repair it. :evil:

 

[Gareth Hughes]

The dreadful hash that was made of Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs for the Last Night of the Proms after about 2000. Reinstating the opening bugle calls was fine, chopping out Spanish Ladies and others to make space for regional "National Airs" wasn't. Not for the Daily Mail "political correctness gone mad" reason (I love seeing Mail readers foaming at the mouth), but because it broke up the storyline of Wood's work, the additional airs chosen were abysmal choices in that context, the arrangements of them were banal beyond belief, and they were put in place with all the grace of a rollerskating hippo.

The Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Sea Songs performed instead in 2008 was very good though. But Sea Songs by anyone seem to have been dropped completely now.*

Going back to Wood's original one verse and two choruses arrangement of Rule Britannia, instead of the Malcolm Sargeant one was also a mistake.

*(edit) it's Hans Zimmer's score from Pirates of the Carribean this year, apparently. Now film scores can and do count as "classical" music, and are an entirely respectable artform (Walton's Henry V, V-W's Scott of the Antarctic, lots of Michael Nyman), but :shock:

 

[JoceAndChris]

A beautifully written grump, but is he allowed to grump about something so minutely specific that no-one else has ever heard of?

That's probably just my ignorance and you will all now complain about the mis- treatment of classical music!

 

[Nigel Watts]

The Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Sea Songs performed instead in 2008 was very good though. But Sea Songs by anyone seem to have been dropped completely now.*

This has reminded me that I have the Vaughan Williams on CD somewhere, sung by Janet Baker. It's as a scrumptious as a Plateau de fruits de mer washed down with a good Muscadet (apologies for the unpatriotic analogy).

Caught the end of a prom on BBC4 last night. BBC Phil was on top form.Just couldn't place the half-familiar piece they were playing - it seemed to be hovering somewhere between Beethoven and Brahams. Turned out to be Schumann's 4th symphony. I have been working my my way through a 7 CD boxed set of his piano works recently. Most rewarding and much that is surprisingly unfamiliar.

Oh dear Penners will be upset - I have just composed an anti-grump.

 

[Penners]

hovering somewhere between Beethoven and Brahams.

Perhaps it was by Beethoven - Graham Beethoven, as opposed to Ludwig van.

Oh dear Penners will be upset - I have just composed an anti-grump.

Not at all, Nigel. Penners' Third Law of Commotion states that for every grump there must be an equal and opposite anti-grump.

 

[wobs]

Speaking of fine music...
Grump:
I missed the Half Man Half Biscuit session on Wednesday night as I was in the yard stripping paint, and sanding. Darting in and out to check what was on the radio did no good. It is a rare thing these days that they do new material, and so would have liked to hear it. A download had to suffice.

With this in mind, and the fact that this is a grump thread on a Period Property board, it would seem appropriate to show the lyrics of one of their previous masterpieces, as its a. A list of grumps, and b. mentions some period property.

Therefore, i give you: Breaking News by Half Man Half Biscuit:

We’re just receiving reports of an incident at a farm in Sussex where a number of people have been arrested in connection with “Annoying The Nation”.
It is believed that that the owner of the farm, a Mr. Hibbert, has been co-operating with Police and government officials in a plot codenamed Operation Less Pricks, and kindly granted permission for the use of his seventeenth century tithe barn as a temporary holding place for those arrested. Although not confirmed, we are led to understand that those already charged include:
#Bus drivers who don’t wait for people to sit down before pulling away from the bus stop;
#Taxi drivers who use their horns instead of knocking on the door;
#People who moan at the council about the streets being full of litter, not stopping to think that it is people who drop litter, not the council;
#A room full of drama teachers listening to Bjork;
#Grown men with replica shirts worn over their jumpers, who stand up and stretch out their arms when the opposing team fail to hit the target;
#An assortment of scriptwriters, novelists and playwrights who own Agas but don’t know how to use them;
#A musical equipment reviewer responsible for an article titled “Microphone of the Month”;
#A woman who described herself as “A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex And The City” and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it’s a good name. Don’t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill’s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot.
#Also being held is a whole wall full of teenagers spitting needlessly;
#An amateur thug in camouflage trousers whose Japanese fighting dog had run amok on a Swindon council estate;
#A man from the record company who said that George Michael continues to challenge social taboos through his music;
#Lisa Riley;
#Continuity announcers introducing comedy shows;
#A pub band who get uppity when everyone goes to the bar during a song they’ve written themselves;
#A group of football fans referred to as Commodores, as in once, twice, three times a season, who feed sugar lumps to police horses at Cup Finals;
#An artist who said his next album would be more “song-based”;
#A man who informs people that he gets up at six am every morning and seemed to want a medal;
#People who say they speak as they find and are somehow proud of it;
#Journalists who try to spell an interviewee’s laugh;
#An organisation who declared an awareness week for awareness weeks;
#And a council worker who dropped litter.

We’ll bring you more details as they emerge…

From: Half Man Half Biscuit: Breaking News - lyrics http://www.chrisrand.com/hmhb/cammell-laird-social-club-2002/breaking-news/#ixzz0waymnbek

Hear it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8CT8XErlDI

 

[worms]

Back to generic grumps:
[start rant] Why do all the potential on-line suppliers charge an extra £10-£12 over the usual postage fee to ship a £25 router bit to the North of Scotland, when all they do is put it in a jiffy bag in the usual Royal Mail postage at the flat-rate postage-to-anywhere-in-UK charge? [/rant over]

 

[Flyfisher]

Ouch. That's rather naughty. I can understand why a courier company might charge extra for a trip to the back of beyond carrying just one parcel, but marking up standard RM rates is hardly fair.

I would send a stiff letter to the company demanding a refund and informing them of your plans for a web-wide campaign of naming and shaming the company in question.

 

[robgil]

e bay people who charge £4.70 2nd class parcel shipping then add £7.50 for fuel to get to the post office , £1.50 wear and tear for the car , £300 for going out in the rain and 2.5 hours of their time at £15 per hour with £20 minimum charge for the first half hour.
so , door knocker = 99p , postage = 7 billion pounds.

 

[Flyfisher]

:lol: :lol: :lol:
plus VAT of course.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

The eBay woman I bought a compressor from but who can't work out how to access Paypal and has just removed her item and accused me of not paying her, when I paid her 10 days ago.

I suspect my first negative rating war is about to break out - its MAD - we're both guaranteed to lose our 100% ratings too... :evil:

 

[philpjuk100]

Folks in shops who know less than you do,"synthetic oil?no I dont think so,you dont want that stuff,I would use the real stuff!"-Lime? wadaya want that for?mortar! no you want sand and cement for mortar thats what you want!"

 

[Penners]

Oops - Phil, you've started me off.

Assistants in technology shops who don't know their products (chief culprit - PC Bl@@dyworld). You ask them whether the device will perform a certain function, and they answer "I should think so".

I don't want opinion, I want unequivocal fact! Will it or won't it?

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

 

[Moo]

One of my favourites is the knitting shop that proudly labelled a bin of yarns "Nylon knitting wool".

 

[FamilyWiggs]

(chief culprit - PC Bl@@dyworld).

I hate the fact they try and elicit my postcode from me every time I buy something inconsequential like an ink cartridge. I find asking the till operator for their house number and postcode first usually terminates the exchange. 8)