grouch

WITH deference to the team of Edinburgh researchers who discovered why men become bad-tempered grouches by studying testosterone levels in rams, I could have told them all this within a matter of months of getting my own small herd of Angora goats.

Grouches are little guys who sneak up on you when you stay up too late or when you do not eat right.

If those bad-news weren't such grouches, he suggests, everyone would be happier.

Anne says: It's amazing how many mourners love to opine about the wonderful attributes of the loved and lost, when in fact they were miserly old grouches. It's a bit of a British ritual and, as with all family gatherings, some love to weep and others to bicker.

Grouches like Paul Weller, Van Morrison, John Cale and George Harrison (his first new song in ten years) lend support.

Our fat little housecat doesn't deal with it too well, but grouches and grudges his way through to an inevitable respect and revolting, implausible love for his inner city brothers and sisters.