Women spend ten days a year in a grumpy mood, according to the Daily Mail. The top triggers include being overweight, feeling undervalued, having a bad hair day, breaking a nail and the wrong time of the month.
The standard reaction to this among the men I know was to question the number of days. More like 100, surely? My reaction was slightly different. I’m not convinced there’s any such thing as a ‘grumpy day’ for most women, any more than there is a ‘happy day’. Rather, all days contain peaks and troughs and the variation isn’t between good days and bad days so much as days on which their mood swings are violent and frequent and days on which they’re relatively stable.
OK — I’m being provocative. Trolling politically correct feminists is such easy sport it’s difficult to resist, but the truth is I recognised more of myself in this Daily Mail article than my wife.
Caroline is occasionally grumpy, but not as often as I am, as our children can attest. I find almost everything they do irritating, from dropping crumbs on the kitchen floor to listening to Capital Radio. And the ingratitude! The little Chinese Emperors take everything for granted. I spend the hours before bedtime trailing round after them picking up their socks and pants, folding up their trousers and shirts, helping them into their pyjamas, putting toothpaste on their toothbrushes… It’s like a scene from Downton Abbey in which I’m butler, housemaid and valet rolled into one.
I know, I know. If I want them to do these things for themselves I should leave them to their own devices, but I can’t face the nuclear meltdown that would result. I just want to get them into bed as quickly as possible so I can go downstairs and join my wife in front of the TV before she finishes the bottle of wine she uncorked when she handed the kids over to me at 6.30
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