The grumpy thread

[Kiltox]

Just sorted a trade policy.... so why the grump?

 

Rang Admiral to cancel my renewal - they instantly offered to knock 25% off the price. What the actual fuck??

[320touring]

Just sorted a trade policy.... so why the grump?

 

Rang Admiral to cancel my renewal - they instantly offered to knock 25% off the price. What the actual fuck??

Still not a trade policy...

[Kiltox]

No I still told them to poke it, I’m just a bit disgusted that there’s such a gap between renewal price and what they’ll actually do.

[Datsuncog]

Christmas shit in the shops at the beginning of November. Fuck off!

 

 

This year, the traditional Hallowe'en bulwark seems to have been comprehensively breached - we had stores with twinkly trees up and aisles of green and red tat running alongside the purple and orange tat from mid-October.

 

M&S and Home Bargains - looking in your general direction.

 

Mind you, the supermarkets have been piling metric fucktons of Celebrations and Quality Street up by the front doors since late August, like some kind of confectionery-derived seawall defences. Sainsburys had stacks of Mr Kipling mince pies ready to go by the first week of September (with a best-before date of 22 October). Eurospar was advertising their 'Twelve Deals Of Christmas' on advertising hoardings from the last week of September - and now all retailers have gone flat-out batshit in punting out their cringeworthy, twee declarations about family values and togetherness and all that old shit, and that sodding Elf on the Bastarding Shelf seems to be so rampant that I'm giving serious thought about calling in Rentokil as it's clearly now reached infestation levels.

 

I actually wouldn't mind it all so much if the same places didn't rip the whole fucking lot down at 3.59pm on Christmas Eve - the exact second that the corporate accountants have calculated that they can no longer wring more a few more pennies out of you through their total surround-sound onslaught of crude emotional manipulation involving cutesy-cute kids and smiley wrinkly grandparents, intimating that you too could bask in such slack-jawed bliss and harmony if only you'd just spend a little more...

 

Then BANG, it's all gone - and instead it's wall-to-wall ads for fucking summer holidays blasting your eyes and ears from 4.00pm on. And carpet sales. And kitchens.

 

Once Christmas Eve comes, the whole thing might as well not be happening so far as retailers and advertisers are concerned - and the whole shitshow won't get another mention until the day after August Bank Holiday 2019. Cynical, cynical, cynical. It would cost them nothing to leave all the tinsel up for even a week. But no. All gone. Fuck off. If there's no money to be made, it won't be allowed to live. Immediately, it's Easter eggs and hot cross buns shoved in your face before you've even made your mind up what you're doing for New Year's Eve.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Christmas-hater. I really do love it. But let the seasons be the seasons in their own time. It's still autumn, FFS; we went out for a smashing walk yesterday round the Woodburn reservoir, still lined with vivid orange and yellow leaves. It's not winter, yet (though we've had the odd heavy frost) and I like it being not-yet-winter.

 

I don't want to see synthetic snowflakes in every shop window. I don't want 30-second faux-idyllic depictions of other people's Christmases acted out every time I walk past a television. I don't want to hear sleighbells over fucking everything on the radio, especially when it involves a mumsy voiceover confidentially intoning "Christmas is stressful enough...", followed by shilling whatever pointless wasteful product the advertiser wants you to buy, finely tuned to inflict maximum emotional damage.

 

No. It isn't. You're making it stressful, by plucking at our coatsleeves every two fucking minutes. Do you not love your family? How will they know if you don't get yourself into crippling debt buying endless plastic shit, and frozen prawn rings that taste of nothing at all? On and on it goes, for weeks and months. Late stage capitalism eating itself, and causing untold mental damage in its death throes. No-one will love you if you don't buy our products! Spend money you don't have with us, or you're letting down everyone dear to you! It's inescapable.

 

Even if I manage to keep the TV and radio off, and avoid shops as much as possible (I charged straight past They_All_Do_That_Sir in Tesco without even noticing only yesterday, so intent was I to get some bananas and leave without being dragged into the emotional quagmire), then I can't help but have my eyeballs snagged by the billboards every time I'm out in the car... turkey, sprouts, Santa, elves, snowmen, penguins... IT'S FUCKING NOVEMBER, PEOPLE. STOP IT.

 

It all just feels so warped and out of kilter, and I find that it does really upset me quite a lot. Just as I'm starting to warm to it, around 21st December, suddenly it's all snatched away. The contrast is highly disorienting. I understand that even in the US, the whipping boy for consumerism, Christmas tends not to be overt until after Thanksgiving (is that still the case?). I feel like it's been Christmas for a month here already. Where's it going to end? If Sainsburys habitually put their mince pies out a week earlier each year (which they have, in the past three years I've been actively monitoring them), then by 2030 they'll be putting them out in the third week of June.

 

For me, Christmas runs from Christmas Eve until Twelfth Night. Yet I have colleagues who take their fucking decorations down on Boxing Day - because, at that stage, they've already had them up for over a month. Then complain that the days after Christmas are 'really boring', so all they do is go up to Junction One and The Outlet and other soul-melting greybox retail developments, conveniently situated beside motorway sliproads, to buy more trashy shit they don't really want. Words fail me. My flabber is utterly ghasted.

 

Right, I've vented my spleen, and now I feel like pulling the shutters down now on all of this. See yis in January.

[sierraman]

I don’t feel like it will be long before we are celebrating Thanksgiving in the UK, bizarre as it sounds because we already have Black Friday and god knows what else that’s come from America.

[Louise2cv]

Yes yes yes yes

 

I wanted a pumpkin on Halloween. On the actual 31st of October. Went in to tesco at 7pm. Not a single Halloween item in the shop.

 

 

I like pumpkin soup, buying a pumpkin now is a bit of a war... despite the thousands grown all year. They got a face carved into them before getting chucked in the bin. Great use of resources that.

 

 

I want to reclaim December.

 

You remember? That month we used to have? Before it's name was changed to Christmas?

 

I flipping love Christmas. For the two-ish weeks it is.

[dozeydustman]

I have spoken to her on the phone this morning and unless I am prepared to "stop being delusional and accept it's all my fault" blah blah blah.

 

 

As others have said it sounds like she's using you as the whipping boy for some grievance she's struggling to deal with. Sit her down, make her a cup of tea or coffee and go through it and be as cool and calm as possible; You need to find out what is bugging her, even if some (or all) of it is your fault as it will give closure to both of you and you can then make steps to getting back on track and what you, her or both of y'need to stop or start doing. 

 

It'll be tough, shitty, possibly end up with an even bigger row, may even take a few weeks before you discover what the answer is. You obviously love & care about your mrs as it's made you upset enough to be in tears a couple of times, if not more. It's far better to do this sort of thing in person than irate phone calls or texts.

[anonymous user]

Ah, pumpkins, my sister who lives in Pembrokeshire told me what happened at a nearby farm back in October. Someone stuck some photos on Facebook of the field of pumpkins, instead of just looking at the pictures people decided they had to see it for themselves, travelling from all over the country. It ended up with gridlock on the narrow roads/lanes resulting in the police having to attend and people waiting for hours to see the pumpkins. The daftest bit being that hardly any of these people actually bought a pumpkin from the farm, it was just a selfie opportunity

[dozeydustman]

Ah, pumpkins, my sister who lives in Pembrokeshire told me what happened at a nearby farm back in October. Someone stuck some photos on Facebook of the field of pumpkins, instead of just looking at the pictures people decided they had to see it for themselves, travelling from all over the country. It ended up with gridlock on the narrow roads/lanes resulting in the police having to attend and people waiting for hours to see the pumpkins. The daftest bit being that hardly any of these people actually bought a pumpkin from the farm, it was just a selfie opportunity

 

 

There's a pumpkin farm near me that does something like this. Slindon pumpkins.

 

I did buy a few squashes and gourds from them, but the woman at the till was such a miserable old boot last time when I told Mrs D how I was going to make soup in a particular way, I haven't been back this year.

 

Growing pumpkins just to make Jack o'Lanterns is such an epic waste of food. I have made soup with a couple of leftover fruit, but they're so bland. Prefer a butternut myself. Why not go back to carving turnips & neeps? They're eaten all year round and the bit that gets carved out can go in the pot straight away as opposed to the stringy, seedy mess that gourds have, with which you can't do much.

[stephen01]

Agreed to sell one of my heralds, sad day. 

[Richard]

Why not go back to carving turnips & neeps? 

 

I can answer that. They are an utter bastard to scoop out. Even if by some miracle you manage not to lacerate yourself, you'll almost certainly end up with blisters.

[Datsuncog]

Why not go back to carving turnips & neeps?

 

I can answer that. They are an utter bastard to scoop out. Even if by some miracle you manage not to lacerate yourself, you'll almost certainly end up with blisters.

 

The trick is to cut around the perimeter of the topped turnip, then incise it into squares using vertical cuts, before cutting in at a 45^o angle to get the cubes out.

 

 

 

It's a rite of passage in Ulster childhood!

 

#Turnips4Life #NoPumpkinsHere

[Richard]

Scottish childhood too.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I find just repeating the same thing helps.

 

"This car of yours needs to be out of here by December the first. If it's still there on that date then I need to move it out into the road as I need my garage"

 

Whatever he says to you, just use the same reply. They soon get the message. Then stick to your word or people will just walk over you.

 

 

Apply for the V5. Then weigh the cunt in. 

[cort1977]

there-are-twelve-days-of-christmas-none-of-which-are-6365430.png

 

Right, I've vented my spleen, and now I feel like pulling the shutters down now on all of this. See yis in January.

 

That was a highly articulate and vehement outburst Vyvian Datsuncog, much appreciated.

 

Sounds like Pembrokeshire farmers need to get on the 'Pumpkin Patch' bandwagon, that is set up lots of pumpkins together on a bit of grass, with some straw bales, checkered tablecloths and whatever other 'fall' accessories take your fancy.  Charge people a couple of quid to take selfies and Robert's your father's brother. 

 

Thanksgiving does generally keep the lid on Christmas here but that just means that the adverts for shit say 'holidays' before Black Friday^tm and Christmas afterwards.  It's carnage in US retail at the moment, Amazon is killing JC Penney, Sears, K Mart etc. and their marketing is increasingly shrill but with public radio, internet and Netflix if I do watch something it is possible to avoid most of it. 

[dozeydustman]

It's a rite of passage in Ulster childhood!

 

#Turnips4Life #NoPumpkinsHere

 

 

 

Scottish childhood too.

 

 

And in Kent until the pumpkin came along in the late 80's. Trying to find a decent sized rutabaga/swede/yellow turnip/neep (delete as appropriate) is a bit of a chore though, they tend to cut the big ones in half now in supermarkets and the local greengrocers :/

 

We always carved a globular root veg when I was in the cubs (85-88)

[Pillock]

DatsunCog, please write a book containing just grumpy rants. It would be like a Clarkson book without wanting to ram it, on fire, up the author's arse after the first few pages.

[Cavcraft]

Yeah, solicitors and money going to someone who’s only pay out should be a cricket bat applied repeatedly to their head.

[Louise2cv]

A story on a local news Facebook page hailing the "Christmas miracle" of a dog, missing for over a year, being reunited with its owner yesterday.

 

A Christmas miracle FFS.

[somewhatfoolish]

Can pumpkin seeds be roasted? I help out scooping innards of upwards of 30 of the bastards for a kiddies' Halloween night at the local sailing club, and we generally end up with a couple of binbags full of mushy, stringy gloop and seeds that just gets lobbed in the bin.

 

edit to add; I did hollow out turnips when I was a young'un, although I don't believe photographic evidence exists. They were indeed hard work in comparison with these orange colonial interlopers.

[Louise2cv]

I think so but it's not an easy process if I remember correctly; I think I looked into it when I had a pumpkin soup obsession.

[beko1987]

My mum roasts pumpkin seeds, their delicious! Dunno how she does it though, I'll ask for the recipe

[richardmorris]

Scottish childhood too.

And wales really. We used to do turnips in the 70s.

[pandamonium]

Why do I keep selling cars which have nothing wrong with them, only to have to hurriedly look for something to drive, that may or may not be more shit?

 

At least the next car will be a milestone 100th car since passing my test in August 1999

[DodgeRover]

Turnips or swede in Derbyshire in the 70s and early 80s, pumpkins were funny foreign veg then and we probably didn't have the spare cash for buying food to throw away but we could grow our own turnips.

[Snipes]

No I still told them to poke it, I’m just a bit disgusted that there’s such a gap between renewal price and what they’ll actually do.

I had that at my last renewal, which may have been Elephant I can't quite recall.

My reaction was basically,

"What? You expect me to renew after all, when you've just told me you tried to fob me off with a terrible deal, hoping I'd just accept it?"

[MarvinsMom]

it was always a turnip (nee swede if you are a pedant) in the north east of england, certainly upto 20-odd years ago.

 

see pumpkin is foul, at least the hollowed out insides of the turnip would get eaten.....

[Fumbler]

Mashed swede is a favourite of mine. So is Swedemason however I am told they are very different things.

[SierraMikeHotel]

Heard from an old mate after a gap of about 12 years (as referenced in Single and Sad).

 

Felt good that someone from the past was thinking about me.

 

No, she just wants a favour. A really, really big one. At three days notice.

 

I am not taking a day off work and missing a night's sleep to give her a lift to catch a flight that she shouldn't have booked because public transport can't get her there in time and she can't afford an airport hotel.

[beko1987]

Can pumpkin seeds be roasted? I help out scooping innards of upwards of 30 of the bastards for a kiddies' Halloween night at the local sailing club, and we generally end up with a couple of binbags full of mushy, stringy gloop and seeds that just gets lobbed in the bin.

Mummy got ye olde family cookbook out and says -

 

"Clean seeds under cold running water.Then boil in salted water in a large pan for 5 to 10 mins depending on seed size.Drain and lay on kitchen apparel.Season with salt and pepper or add chilli,cumin or paprika.Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade and spread seeds evenly on a large baking sheet for 8-10 mins.Store in an airtight container for up to 3days.After this they tend to lose their crunch"

 

And they were fab, I ate them by the fistful, but that possibly more for the fat bastard thread...