Arecent survey – no wait! come back! – a recent survey indicated that the grumpiest people in Britain are men aged between 35 and 54. Not, as you might think, proper old people with creaking joints and memories of when it was all fields round here.
Today’s grumpy old men are not just the older generation. We’re not all going round acting like extras from Dad’s Army, whingeing around on the seafront moaning about the Hun. No, today’s grumpy old men, like policemen and Sting, are getting younger every day. We know the difference between CD and DVD, we remember when ‘boy bands’ meant The Sex Pistols and The Clash, and we dress more like our sons than our dads. Today’s grumpy old men are stuck between devil-may-care youth and past-all-caring old age, griping and groaning and generally having a miserable time.
It doesn’t help that we’re British, either. Looking around at our international neighbours, we Brits do seem to be a lot grumpier than them. Whoever even heard of a sulky Spaniard? A bad-tempered Dutchman? A cranky Italian (well, apart from Mussolini). Even the French are less irritable than we are, and that’s saying a lot. But cross the English Channel and you are in a land of grump.
Some facts and figures: 36% of us can’t even afford a week’s holiday away from home, compared with 12% in Germany, France and the Netherlands. This is probably because we live on a big wet rock, or ‘island’, whereas people in Germany, France and the Netherlands just have to step outside the front door and hey presto! they are in the Netherlands, Germany or France.
The weather here is shocking. It rains in summer, it snows in spring, it floods in autumn and it’s unspeakable in winter. Living in Britain is like living in a cold swamp. Foreigners notice that we talk about the weather quite a lot. And we do, nervously, as the people of a village terrorised by a wolf or a serial killer might.
Also there’s not much room in here. There are 78 people per square kilometre in Spain, 106 in France – and 243 in the United Kingdom. 243 people per square kilometre! Never mind enough room to swing a cat, that’s not enough room to frisk a cockroach. And it is us British men who get the worst of it.
Scientists working in science labs in Edinburgh – real scientists, with leather elbow patches – have identified what they call ‘Irritable Male Syndrome’, caused by sinking testosterone levels. IMS affects 30% of all men – that’s all men, not just Old Man Steptoe – and manifests itself in the following ways: depression, loss of energy, low self-esteem, reduced libido and… irritability. Doctor Christopher Steidle, an eminent urologist (now there’s a job to make you grumpy), says, ‘Many of the symptoms are indistinguishable from old age, and for years you’ve always thought of it as “grumpy old man” syndrome. Now we know what the grumpy old man probably has.’