This is my first blog for two years. Why did I stop? I don’t know. Time I suppose, or the lack of it, or maybe my ‘Grumpy Old Man’ view on life was getting toooooo Grumpy even for me. Anyway I have had the urge to write again and here is my first blog of which I hope there will be more and on a fairly regular basis. No doubt there will be much of the ‘Grumpy Old Man’ showing through again but this will also be interspersed with what I hope will be seen as a little less grumpy commentary on life. But regardless of what I write about all I will say is that I will be myself and if I am a GOM then so be it. If you don’t like it then don’t read it.

What subject will I blog about? Well basically anything including TV, business, politics….anything. Where possible I will try to introduce a bit of humour, others will be serious, who knows what each blog will bring.

So where shall I start?

As ‘boring’ (or is it disappointing?) goes the last week has really won the gold award, I had hoped that the woman of my dreams would come and seduce me and ravage my aging body, but that did not happen and I also hoped that I would win several million on the Euro millions lottery on tonight but that has not happened either. If I were forced to decide which of these two ‘non events’ was the most disappointing I would have to say the former, although who knows, had I won the Euro millions then the woman of my dreams might have seen me in a different light and then decided that she would whisk me away and seduce me in a quiet corner somewhere after all, so I could have actually ended up with both but it was not to be. I dare say that the next week will be just as boring and just as disappointing, but I will go on hoping…….

Now for anyone who does not know me you would think from the opening couple of paragraphs I am a miserably depressed 50 something who has nothing more to look forward to than death, well you would be partly correct…..I am 50 something, but depressed I am not and waiting for death I certainly am not. On the contrary life is good (although it would have been better if I had been whisked away by the woman of my dreams)….(that’s the last time the woman of my dreams will be mentioned until she actually does whisk me away)…..as I said life is good, 50 something is good. I still enjoy living so I have no intention of dying. My body calendar tells me that if I were a mountaineer I would only just be ¾ of the way up Mt Everest and even when I reach the peak I have booked a long stay there before I start the slow descent to base camp.

So what is good about life? Everything, the sun, the moon…….right down to work. OK so you may not believe me but it is true. Anyone reading this who is approaching a milestone age be it 40, 50, 60 etc don’t be depressed be happy, embrace it and don’t worry about grey hairs, wrinkles or aches and pains. Remember if all else fails there is Viagra.

Now if there is any ladies reading this I don’t want them to go thinking that because I mentioned the V word that these blogs will be aimed entirely at men, far from it. Anyway Viagra is not just a man thing it can be an immense benefit for women as well, so go on girls get out there and get some for his birthday…you won’t regret it.

So seeing as we are on the subject of sex, let me start on one of my pet subjects…….INTERNET PORN………..Now I know that there is a lot of stuff out there that crosses the line and let me say that I am no pervert….well not a sick pervert in the illegal sort of paedophile sense, but I do enjoy having a browse around the everyday common all garden porn, mainly because most of the time it makes me laugh.
As a sexually exciting phenomenon I am not quite sure what all the fuss is about. OK I will admit every now and then I do come across something that may just stir the testosterone up a bit but apart from a random few most are so false and unerotic (if there is such a word) that it is a turn off rather than a turn on. All that screaming and then all that shagging in the strangest and what looks like most uncomfortable positions. I’m sure that even a contortionist would find some of them difficult. I know if I were to try them I would be at my Doctors with back problems more often than not. What puzzles me is why men or women for that matter hand over their hard earned cash to watch such crap? They obviously do I suppose or there wouldn’t be anybody prepared to make it. I certainly would not pay for it, it has to be free. I will always stand by my principals of never paying for sex. (Well that’s the official line anyway)

Having said all that, Erotic or not I am sure that most men out there will tell you that it can be addictive at times. Sometimes if the mood is right it doesn’t matter how busy work is there is always time to have browse. Come on chaps, is that not true?
It doesn’t matter how busy you are you can’t resist a bit of ‘relaxation’ at some time during the day, even if it means that you have to work on into the evening to meet that deadline. The trouble is that sometimes the quick 5 minutes you promise yourself turns into a lot longer trying to find that perfect sex. Is that just a man thing?

OK lets move onto another side to the porn sites. They can, believe it or not be educational. After all they can teach you new tricks and you can also keep an eye on what our European cousins are up to in the bedroom or in the case of one of my favourite websites……what they are up in the car park of a German motorway service station. Being British I suppose I am pretty straightforward when it comes to sex. Smile, wink, strip off, a bit if fondling and groping to comply with the statutory foreplay requirements that women like and then down to the real thing for a couple of minutes before it all finishes with a bit of energetic grunting and groaning. But going by what I see on the web I do think I am missing something in the dressing up dept. Just what is going on with men’s socks. Why is it that 9 out of 10 European blokes leave their socks on when they are shagging? I am intrigued. If I am ever caught at home standing at the bathroom mirror shaving with just my socks on to keep me warm it does no more than to send my wife into a frenzy of nausea and vomiting and threats of divorce. So why does it seem that it is different abroad? Do the women of Europe actually get turned on by the sight of their man laying on the bed with his ‘tackle’ armed and standing to attention dressed only in his socks? Is this something I should be trying when I go on holiday to the Med this summer? In an effort to pull a local beauty should I stand proudly on my hotel balcony with only my favourite cheesy socks on?. Will that then be the spark that sets a German housewife’s heart burning with desire for my sagging 51 year old body? Or will I be seduced and then ravaged by some Turkish female arm wrestler when she sets eyes on me wearing a pair of my grey M & S cotton ‘stay fresh’. I am not convinced, even I find the sight of me wearing just socks a turn off. I am up for anything (at least once anyway) but the sock thing I am not sure about. Maybe though, it could be that am I looking at this from the wrong angle? Could this actually be nothing more than some local civil unrest within the European community? Perhaps this refusal to remove his smelly socks during sex is European mans response to his woman’s refusal to shave her hairy legs and armpits. Maybe he has finally got fed up with her leg stubble chaffing the cheeks of his arse as she grips him with her legs or maybe he has finally got fed up making the excuse that he loves her hairy armpit because it gives him something to hold onto when things get turbulent. The fact is I do not know but I would like to find out.

And whilst we are still on porn just who was the first man to convince a woman that she should have silicone implants, he must have been a good salesman. Again I stand to be corrected by my fellow males but the site of two misshapen jelly filled balloons rolling about on a woman’s chest as she shouts oooh yea !! ooh yea !!! over and over is not what a man wants to see, most men as far as I am aware want natural, whether they are big, small , medium, firm or saggy, natural it is !!! So come on Mr Porn Producer more natural breasts please.

This week was obviously a slow week for news. This week’s headlines included a story about the number of shopping trolleys that go missing from supermarkets, many of which apparently end up in rivers. Now forgive me but is this really something that deserves to be on our main evening national news? The country, no in fact, the world is nearly bankrupt and we, instead of hunting down renegade bank executives, are being asked to search our rivers for runaway trolleys. “Who takes them and dumps them there? They are polluting our waterways “ says the BBC newsreader. Who actually gives a XXXX ? Anyway should we not be more concerned about some of the more unpleasant objects that are thrown in a river. If my youth was anything to go by then there must a few tonnes of used ‘rubber’ at the bottom of the River Lea in Tottenham. And this river is the one that feeds into the Thames that ends up as drinking water. So back to the trolleys, apparently (just like the rubber) Friday night between 11pm and 2am is the most common time for them to be end up in a river. Well I can vouch for that, well in my case it wasn’t a river but I remember waking up one Saturday morning after a Friday night out and finding one of the blasted things in my kitchen. Now I have not got a clue how it ended up there because I cannot even remember how I got home that particular evening but my guess is that along with those that do end up in the river it was the work of the Friday night fairies. Those are the fairies that appear as soon as you down your 10th pint of Stella. Now every one thinks that fairies are good but as every man will tell you fairies are not good in fact they are down right mischievous. Of course women cannot see the Friday night fairies and that is why when they see us walking home from the pub and assume we are staggering around the pavement because we are pissed they don’t realise that we are actually trying to jump over them or walk around them as they scamper around trying their best to trip us up. They are a menace and of course try telling your wife that is what you are doing and she thinks that you have finally flipped. Having said all that I do think trolleys were one of the most important inventions man has ever made. After all just think how difficult shopping would be without them. And allegedly, like rats, you are never more than 10 yards away from one. Mind you I have never seen a shopping trolley in a porn film? In fact I have never seen a porn film made in a supermarket. There we go Mr Porn Producer instead of the public sex in a German service station car park how about some in my local Sainsburys, it would boost business and would certainly make the whole shopping experience that much more tolerable. I can see the sign out side promoting the event…..This Friday come and see ‘Gloria takes it up the aisle’. (of course I am referring to the shopping trolley !!!!!!!! )

What you might glean from these ramblings so far is that there is a great deal of curiosity that still exists in my life. I still want to find things out, mainly about myself and how I compare to others of my own age. I suppose that was one of the reasons why the BBC series Grumpy Old Men (and women) was watched by so many. We fellow GOM wanted to know that there were indeed other GOM out there who felt the same as us on topical issues and life. Indeed it was comforting to hear that grumpiness did in fact exist throughout the middle aged to older aged population, it was not just the odd individual who felt like that but a whole sector of the nation. Let me just say though for those of more tender years who may read this, being a GOM does not make you miserable. Grumpy and miserable are two different conditions. I would in fact be proud to be a GOM but would take exception if someone called me miserable. I like to think that my grumpiness can actually give a positive angle on life.

If you search through the blogs there seems to be number of them devoted to trying to prevent the younger generation turning into GOM or GOW. They tell of various methods how to remain happy throughout life and therefore never feel the need to moan about anything. I ask myself WHY IN EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY ALL THE TIME? For god’s sake (sorry that should be God with a capital) what a miserable existence to be ‘happy all the time’. Being Grumpy is like dreaming, if you don’t do it you can suffer mental stress and end up going mad. Being grumpy now and then and having a good old moan never did anyone any harm ,its good for you !!!

So in view of this lets get back to being grumpy again, I mentioned above those of more tender years, perhaps I should be more specific here and say those in their teenage years. I often ask myself whether teenagers actually serve any real purpose in life, do they actually contribute anything to the human race after all very often they seldom resemble anything human and in fact very often most don’t even seem to exhibit the same amount of intelligence that a dog has. Lets face it you can train a dog to be obedient whereas it would appear that very few teenagers, particularly my two, obey anything that they are told. Asked to get up at 8am they surface at 1pm. They raid the fridge even though the food they eat was reserved for our dinner guests.. Ask them to wash their dirty dishes and you are made to feel weird because you don’t use disposable plates. You threaten them that if they do not clean their bedroom you will leave the plates and food scraps stored under their bed to rot there. Then exactly one week later you are forced to do what you said you wouldn’t do because you do not have enough plates left to serve the rest of the family Sunday lunch. Then there is homework…..what homework? Its amazing that they seem to be able to complete their homework without you actually ever seeing them do it. Are they geniuses or magicians? No neither, they are just good at downloading and plagiarizing their essays in seconds from the internet. Now dare I say it,

“ when I was a child ”

Now, this is the phrase that sends my two into a raging frenzy, the phrase that makes them scurry around searching for a crucifix to hold to my face at arms length as if I was some evil vampire or demon that has just recited a deadly spell that will summon Satan himself.

“Here we go again”… “Dad things are different now”… “we don’t live in the dark ages” … “we are fed up hearing about what you didn’t have” …. “everyone is better off now”… “there is more money now” … “people don’t need to be hungry”….. “Get real Dad”

These are just a few of their responses…..

Try telling them that the reason there is more money is because their mother and I have worked our ‘wotsits’ off to earn it (By the way in case you were wondering my wife never did have any ‘wotsits’…..well at least I hope she didn’t…)

Like with most things, for a quiet life I have come to live with the ‘attitudes’ of my teenage kids. That may not be the right thing to do in some people eyes but, hey, I love them and they are my kids and lets face it things could be worse, they could be out there nicking cars or mugging people.

Now something else I observed this week and it sort of takes us back to porn again. Can I offer a piece of advice for the designers and merchandisers at Dorothy Perkins (For those of you reading this outside the UK Dorothy Perkins is a large womans retailer here). As I say a piece of advise….In future when you design a new logo get someone who is a bit more streetwise (or webwise) to check what you are going to do before you order up and install all your new signage. I went into a Dorothy Perkins with my wife this week and as we walked in there on a wall prominently in the middle of the shop was a very large sign

‘DP for Women’.

Now if you are not a visitor to porn sites then you, like those at Dorothy Perkins, will not know what the term DP stands for. For the majority we do know and well there will be a lot of women getting excited about what is going on in the fitting rooms……..

My last word is to pass on my regrets to the unfortunate Corpus Christ Oxford team that has been stripped of their BBC University Challenge title. Harsh but fair I would say. The guy had a job and the rules say student…no job. Had the BBC let them off them it would have been unfair to all of us that had abided by the rules. The only reason me and my three fellow students from the little known University of Tottenham, who have spent the last 40 years or so studying for our CSE in ‘Life Sciences’ have never been eligible is that we have all had Saturday morning jobs at Tesco, (Gail Trimble….pah…..you were lucky we weren’t there !!!!)

I am now at the point where I think that I am going to call it a day other wise I won’t have anything to say in the next blog next week..

If you have got through all of this then thanks, if you skipped a bit in the middle then you might have missed a good bit and if you didn’t read any of it then you probably have had a best time of all of us.