Grumpy

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Thump, thump, thump, goes the sound of me falling back down to earth. I suddenly realise I have been in a joy haze for the last three weeks. I suppose it had to wear off eventually. Even Red the Mare cannot entirely defeat the human condition.

I like to present a good front for the blog. Everyone has their griefs and grumps; I’m not sure they have time to indulge someone else’s wail.

Wailing is pretty dull. Witness the current outrage on Twitter over the fact that a faintly narcissistic woman called Samantha Brick is complaining that all women hate her because she is beautiful. (I am not over-simplifying for effect; she really did say that.)

Everyone got furious and some people were disproportionately horrible. Then Mrs Brick wrote a triumphant follow-up saying, See, See – this just proves my point.

I think the reason people got so furious was not because of the rather odd lack of self-awareness or empathy displayed in the piece, but that a woman was moaning about something which many people crave. I think also it was such a silly moan. I think of moaning as a waiting till you see the whites of their eyes kind of thing; don’t waste your emotional capital on small, insignificant things, because you are going to need it when the big battalions roll into town.

This is why I hate moods so much. Most of the time my emotions are explicable, and rather straightforward. As someone in Nancy Mitford once said, I think it might have been Linda in The Pursuit of Love: I’m simple soul; I laugh when I’m happy and cry when I’m sad.

Sometimes I get ambushed by emotion: I’ll think I’m having a perfectly fine day and then suddenly find I am sobbing for my dead dog. But at least that makes sense: there was a creature I adored, and I miss her, and sometimes that makes water come out of my eyes. I’m not frightened of sorrow, perhaps because I listened to so many Leonard Cohen albums at a young age. It hurts but it is a pointful cathartic hurt. It means something profound; that there was someone you loved well, who is no longer there. This sounds quite strange, but it pleases the rationalist in me. Imagine if you lost someone and felt nothing. That would be truly terrifying.

What I don’t like are the uncomfortable, grating, scratching, pointless emotions. Every so often, I get the feeling of being stuck. I feel almost physically constrained. I don’t want to walk the dog, cook the lunch, tidy the office. (Who am I fooling? I never want to tidy the office.) Everything seems heavy and dull. I am grumpy and demoralised. That is how I feel today.

Don’t tell the Dear Readers that, yells the strict keep buggering on voice. Make something up. Say something funny. Be goofy and romantic about your horse. Don’t wimp and wail and whine. Stop sitting there gazing at your navel and do something useful.

Nothing horrible has happened; everything is as fine as it was yesterday. But for some reason the cloud of unreason has swooped (can clouds even swoop?) and I am in a rage. I wish this stupid flat cold weather would sod off. I don’t want any more stupid buggery snow on the ground. Yesterday it was pretty and scenic; today it is just dirty and irritating. I want to ride again. I don’t want to take the mare out for the first time in her new home in this weather; also, the snow tends to ball up in her hooves, so it’s not safe. I want the balmy sun on my back, and hers. I want to see the Pigeon sniffing about in the fecund, spring earth. I want to be able to go out in the garden and gaze happily on the green shoots of promise, instead of worrying about the cold crimping everything.

See? It's like being six years old. I want I want I want.  It really is not a world-shattering problem. I sit in a warm house in a democratic country where I have the vote and many, many human rights. I am not being oppressed. I can type. I am the lucky recipient of manifold blessings. I have a horse, for God’s sake. (In my crazed, irrational mind, this of course mean I am never allowed to be miserable again, even for a single second. Which may be the heart of the matter, since I have a tendency to think this anyway. It is as if I have a duty to be happy, because I am not living in the Congo.)

It’s just a grumpy day. This is the warp and weft of the human condition. Everyone has grumpy days.

Now I would like a nice final sentence to round everything off. Preferably something mordant and ironical and a bit funny in that cross, amusing way that the grumpy people on television manage. I rummage in my brain. Brain says: are you joking? Brain eyes me as if it would like to punch me in the nose. I back off.

No final sentence then. Just some stupid snow pictures:

Red, from yesterday, looking ravishing, as always:

But even the Pidge looks slightly fed up. Although she does sometimes affect this look as a joke when I point the camera at her, like a supermodel who has just been on one too many shoots:

Hill: