Always look on the bleak side of life...

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Publication: Sunday Express
Date: 2014-08-24
Author: Chris Neill
Page: 34
Language: English

CHRIS NEILL revels in the grumpier side of life as another disappointing Bank Holiday takes shape

IF YOU'RE not grumpy by nature but eager instead always to look on the bright side, then please consider the following and let me see if I can change your mind. Even disregarding the grimness of the news, for those of us safe at home we have had to endure enough irritations to drive all but the most saintly up the wall.

Providing a tiresomely self-aggrandising backdrop has been the sight of people throwing icy water over themselves, filming it and then helpfully putting it up online should we ever find ourselves forgetting what someone chucking icy water over themselves looks like. I've got an ice bucket too. I keep it near the gin bottle. I'm sure you don't need to see it in action.

Then there's a Bank Holiday that promises foul weather and the concomitant battening of hatches. Nevertheless, tomorrow hordes will pretend it's still summer and then regret not taking an extra layer and brolly out with them.

We of a saner, grumpier mind will prevail. Staying indoors, we will hurrumph our way through an afternoon's pitiful television viewing while anticipating a week where everybody else says, "Oh, I thought it was Wednesday and it's actually Thursday. I'm all over the place."

To top it all, Doctor Who is back on our screens. Here he is yet again interminably wandering about through time and space battling Cybermen, losing the directions to Gallifrey someone wrote down for him once and doing whatever else it is he does.

This was all souring my mood most nicely but then I read that Peter Capaldi's portrayal of the time-travelling quack might be as the crotchety middle-aged grump you'd expect him to be what with his spending the past six decades having his life determined by the whims of BBC commissioning editors and so I quite cheered up.

The rumours are that this time around there is to be no mooted love interest and no attractive floppy hair to get in the way of his intergalactic shenanigans. Instead, with any luck Capaldi's Doctor might well be an absolute misery guts. William Hartnell, eat your heart out.

But still, but still... there are always those sunny types, happy in heart and mind. Seeing a field of daisies they want to skip through it and then slake their thirst by sipping eagerly at a permanently half-full glass.

If this is you then you have my condolences, constantly teetering as you are on a precipice overlooking Disappointment Canyon and knowing that at any moment you could tip in. Yet as someone calling up from the bottom you have my guarantee that it's not that bad at all. In fact any sunshine that actually does manage to permeate the ineffable gloom down here is all the sweeter for it.

In this past week alone there has been plenty to bring out my more grouchy side. There was the postman who treated the delivery of a parcel like a grown-up version of Knock-Down Ginger by making sure he scarpered within 15 seconds of ringing the doorbell.

Later the same day I received a return email from someone some 14 months after I wrote in reply to his first one. In this latest message he asked me a question the answer to which was contained in my previous communication. I anticipate having to say the same thing once more in late autumn 2015.

In a train journey on Tuesday many of life's annoyances were laid out for me like the buffet car's singularly grim display of hot and cold snacks. Fellow passengers included those who put their feet on seats and others who treated the inspection of their train tickets as the most unexpected event imaginable so spending 10 minutes digging out the required paperwork.

Prior to this the entire carriage (including me) gave in to that overwhelming urge to wolf down every last scrap of food we had brought along for the journey before the train had even left the platform.

THEN THERE were those passengers who chose to sit next to me even when there were plenty of other seats available and even more infuriatingly those others who selected not to do so despite their options being severely limited. What's wrong with me? Do I look like someone you wouldn't want to travel alongside? I asked myself this as I caught a reflection of my taciturn, glowering features in the train window.

It takes time and effort to be this bad-tempered but the rewards are there for the asking. This coming week, for example, while everyone around us bemoans the washout that was their weekend the Grump can listen politely for a short while then employ his very favourite expression: "I told you so." And if you're

Peter Capaldi you can beat up some Daleks to boot.

Caption: JUST THE TONIC: Peter Capaldi promises to be a crotchety Doctor Who

Always look on the bleak side of life...

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