Haven’t Bought a Weekend Saver
Prefer Animals to Human Beings
Are Obsessed With Their Country
Think They Have Street Cred (1) & (2)
Put Pictures Of Their Family On Their Christmas Cards
Park In Disabled Spaces When Not Entitled
Let Their Children Record Messages On Their Answering Machine
Own Personalised Number Plates
Wear Tops That Show Their Stomachs
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.’
So what, as we all become grumpy old men, does this mean for the future? This. As our testosterone levels go off to join the dodo, the passenger pigeon and decent plays on BBC1, it is going to get more and more rubbish being a man these days. Sexual equality in relationships means we can no longer roll home drunk at lunchtime and expect a roast dinner and all the ironing done. Erosion of the traditional family means that kids grow up faster and therefore notice what prats their dads are at an earlier age. This in turn is worsened by a tide of new technologies which leaves many of us feeling like Piltdown Man on a stupid day. We’re supposed to be the ones who tell kids how to work machinery, but these days only the under-tens know how to reconfigure a computer, plug in a PlayStation, or upload into an mp3 player.
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