The Life of Grump

Bit of a Magpie 62 night last night, and good progress on some of the puzzles. Without commenting on a current puzzle, I think I can safely say that I was held up by not having internet access when I discovered that I didn't know what a Kaprekar number is. Now I do know, however, and my research into this has given me what may be a good idea for the first ever Samuel mathematical puzzle. Which has absolutely nothing to do with Kaprekar numbers, I should add. Whether I can set it without turning it into a word/mathematical hybrid I don't really know, but I'll let the idea gestate for a few weeks before deciding what to do with it.

Emma's been a bit obsessed with Masterchef recently. It's a cooking competition programme on BBC2. Finding myself firmly esconced in my Kent hotel before it started, I decided to see if it was as bad as I feared it might be. I was surprised to find that it was even worse than I could have thought. The sort of programme that I hate is when it tells the viewer every ten minutes what has already happened earlier in the show. A classic example of this is Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (staying on the cookery theme), which after each break for adverts spends about two minutes recapping on what happened before the adverts. Basically, it treats the viewer as if they are a complete idiot. Make your own joke there.

But Masterchef managed to outdo that, and in spades. Despite being only half an hour long, and with no breaks for adverts, this still went on. The second task for the contestants is to work for a couple of hours in the kitchen of a top London restaurant. This takes up six or seven minutes of the programme. Immediately this segment finishes, the contestants are marched into the Masterchef kitchen to prepare a two course meal of their choosing. Despite this following on literally immediately from the restaurant segment, there is still a voiceover to remind us what happened only less than two minutes before. Absolutely unbelievable. It cuts straight from them working in the restaurant to them marching into the kitchen to cook their two course meal, with a voiceover saying something like 'Ian struggled in the pro-kitchen, with his concentration and presentation letting him down'. WE KNOW THIS! IT HAPPENED BARELY SIXTY SECONDS BEFORE! WE ARE NOT STUPID!

This isn't doing my blood pressure any good.

Speaking of not doing my blood pressure any good, the diet is going well. I've lost two stone now, and am suffering from, as Suggs once sang, baggy trousers. Time to dig through the wardrobe and find some slightly smaller clothes. I'm feeling quite excited at the prospect of maybe, by the end of the year, being thin again. I'm being partly motivated by the desire to see if people who see me only rarely will recognise me once I am back to my old slim self. I'd quite like to walk into the Listener Dinner 2009, for instance, and not be recognised! Well, it would amuse me, anyway.

Feelig slightly nervous about tomorrow (Tuesday) for a few reasons. In no particular order:

1. Will Rafa survive the day? Hmm. Obviously I don't know the full story, but it's like Jose Mourinho or Martin Jol all over again - the owners want him out, but he seems to be struggling on. I hope he has the bottle to tell Hicks and Gillette where to go, and resigns. Then, when the Americans sell the club to the Arabs, he can come back again.

2. First day in the office tomorrow since August. That's FIVE MONTHS without having been to Leeds. Is the office still in the same place? Will I recognise anybody there still? Answers on a postcard. Why am I nervous about being in the office? I have no idea. I am sure that I will find out.

3. Am going to the doctor's tomorrow. Nothing exciting about that, except that I have finally decided to go and see them in the hope of doing something about what I suspect is commonly known as 'being depressed'. I am sure that I will be told that I have to not work as hard, learn to relax, etc, etc, but at least I will have done something.

4. Am currently in the process of remortgaging the house. Fixed rate deal runs out at the end of March, with the bonus of payments increasing by £200 per month if this doesn't go through! It's all been credit scored, etc, but I still worry. If it is all fine, then I may even be able to buy a new car.

5. My Times Crossword Club membership expires tomorrow. Normally I get an e-mail saying that it is about to be renewed. No such e-mail this year. Oh, I can't wait for those error 404 messages.

Anyway, those are the day to day worries of any married man in their late 30s. Very dull stuff.

This month's Magpie (61) is turning out to have some superb puzzles. If anybody reading this hasn't looked at Collision Course by Ploy yet, then DO SO NOW!!! You will not be disappointed. 

Have also more or less completed a Samuel puzzle that I have been working on for almost two years! I am sure that is a long time by anyone's standards. 21 months to get a fill (very tricky one, and impossible to use Sympathy) and then a month to write the clues - with incredibly huge constraints on how they can be done. The worst thing is that I have no idea what I have created. It could be a grade A, it could be a grade E, or it could be unsolvable. I have absolutely no idea. I really hope it does see the light of day though, as a LOT of effort has gone into it.

There. Nothing exciting to say today, so not sure why I bothered.

So, what have been the best and worst things that have happened so far this year? Four days into 2008, and so far...

The best thing may be a website that I have just discovered called www.fantasyrafa.com. Here, you can have a go at picking Liverpool teams for future games, the aim being to match Rafa's actual selection as closely as possible. Easy? No. A grand total of 0 entrants (out of about just under 2000) got the team right for Wednesday's debacle of a draw, and Mr Benitez does rotate his side a bit - that being the whole point of the website. Anyway, there are league tables of the most successful users, and plenty more. For the record, my first attempt is for the Luton game in the FA Cup and, controversially, I have gone for a line up that includes neither Gerrard or Torres, but does predict a starting place for novice centre-back Jack Hobbs. I will no doubt be completely wrong.

The second best thing, also Rafa related, may be the fact that he came second in the 'best beard of 2007' awards. The winner? Robert Plant.

The best crossword thing so far this year (that I can mention) is Magpie 61. Fantastic stuff - it really is such an improvement on the old magazine. I'm trying to persuade a friend (no names mentioned) to renew his subscription for 2008, as he seems to (for some reason) be balking at the £30 fee. A fraction over 8 pence per day! What possible reason can there be not to subscribe?

The worst crossword thing so far this year is the growing realisation that my Listener record for 2007 is terrible. I may have submitted every puzzle, but a litany of ridiculous mistakes, mainly in transcribing from working grid to submission grid, has destroyed any hope I had of doing well. I make it 5 puzzles wrong for the year which, accepting that Italy's boot was a genuine mistake (although still roughly the right shape), is not good enough. I mean, I just didn't do the highlighting in the grid for Describer! How stupid is that? Working copy - relevant cells shaded with a pencil. Submission grid - what was I thinking? So..... as a result of that:

My New Year Resolutions.

1. Check Listener submissions more carefully. Submit my working copies if necessary - they may be in pencil, but I am not aware that that is illegal (although I seem to recall somebody saying that JEG doesn't like this very much). We'll see.

2. Try to get less stressed. For instance, I can help to do this by trying to take a bit more control over my work diary. I need to be tougher and just not book days that are so far apeart geographically.

3. To try to be less grumpy. I am grumpy because I am tired, so if I can somehow be less tired...

4. To try to lose weight. Very tricky with my lifestyle (the long hours and the travelling), but do I really want to be dead by the time that I am 40? Probably not.

5. To ignore anything that the media says. Well, not anything, but I am sick and tired of the hyperbole and sensationalism that they generate. Take this week for instance. 'Antarctic weather chaos!' blared the headlines. 'Blizzards to bring chaos for travellers!'. Advice to carry spades in the car, food, etc, etc. Absolute bollocks! On Wednesday night, before Thursday's predicted day of snow chaos, I drove from Liverpool to Lichfield. On Thursday morning, all set for a day of snow chaos, I drove down to Kent, leaving Lichfield at 4.45am and being at the client's at 8.30am. I worked until 7pm. I then drove home from Kent ('snowstorms to bring chaos to the south-east!' the headlines had blared), all the way to North Yorkshire, walking in through my front door at just before midnight. And that wasn't the end... there were still severe weather warnings in force for Thursday night/Friday night for north-eastern England. And this morning I had to drive to Newcastle! Which I did. And do you know what?

Yep, in all that time - Liverpool to Kent to North Yorkshire to Newcastle, throughout the two predicted days of 'TRAVEL MAYHEM!', I did not see one single flake of snow fall from the sky, or any snow lying on the ground.

Still, I am sure that it was a good couple of days for shovel manufacturers, and whichever chocolate company makes Mars Bars (the food of choice, apparently, to keep a stock of in your car in case of being trapped for days in a giant snowdrift).

Good Lord. This annoyed me so much that I went and read the entry for the War of the Worlds radio show panic in the States in the 1930s. A classic example of how the media can affect the rest of the world. Although I did feel sorry for the people of Concrete, Washington. At the exact moment that the fake radio broadcast declared that small towns across the country were being attacked by the aliens, the whole town (population c1000) had a power cut. I bet there were some brown trousers that night.


OK, rant over. Looks like I may be failing on my resolution to be less grumpy. Back to the first Listener of 2008. And for pity's sake, Lancaster, CHECK THE WORDPLAY OF EVERY ENTRY. CHECK THAT YOU TRANSCRIBE CORRECTLY. CHECK YOUR FINAL SUBMISSION GRID TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE INCLUDED ALL THAT YOU ARE ASKED TO BY THE PREAMBLE. Otherwise there will be another bad year ahead.
 

Well, the countdown is on to the last Listener of the year. Phi, apparently, so hopefully it will be a good one. Then the whole thing starts again! Yes, another New Year resolution that I will check my submissions more carefully. No doubt I will still finish 2008 with two or three wrong, mainly due to crass stupidity, but what the hell. Will there be a Samuel Listener in 2008? Well, hopefully. There's currently two with the editors, and I'm starting to feel a bit depressed about it all as my wait to hear back about one of them passes the twelve month mark. Still, let's hope that any news is worth waiting for when it finally arrives!

It's now that strange period between Christmas and New Year where nothing much happens. Emma was back at work yesterday and today, and there hasn't been a great deal of activity around the house. Greatly enjoyed the Extras Christmas special last night - the scenes of Stephen Merchant, and the blokes who used to play Barry and Robbie in Eastenders, working in Carphone Warehouse were inspired. That's about all the TV that have watched, to be honest - that, and Doctor Who on Christmas Day (okay, rescued by an hour and a quarter of Kylie in a maid's costume!), and To The Manor Born (okay, seemed a bit gentle for this day and age). Still, it's the pantomime tonight. What do you mean, 'Oh no it isn't'?

Crossword-wise, have finally finished the Mash grade D in Magpie 60.5 - superb puzzle, and am pleased that I stuck with it even when I thought I would never reach the end. The question is, when will Magpie 61 land in our inbox? Hopefully before midnight on Monday, so can get cracking on it. I need something stimulating to help me stay awake until Auld Lang Syne echoes across the land. Thoughts are starting to return to work - have a terrible first few days back, as next Weds/Thurs/Fri sees me go to Liverpool, Kent then Newcastle. Lots to do on each day as well, particularly the latter two. Still, the traffic can't be too bad on those days? Can it? Surely not.... 

It's great being able to play father christmas for your small children. One of life's great pleasures that I will miss once it is gone.

But it is now 1.45am on Christmas morning, and Molly isn't properly asleep yet. Please go to sleep! I will no doubt be up in about 3 hours, and am cooking Christmas Dinner for 14. Father Christmas is very tired wants to go to bed!!!

On the plus side, Father Christmas is doing rather well with the grade D Mash puzzle from Magpie 60.5. On balance though, being in bed would be a better thing.

Happy Christmas to all.