Slowly but surely, I am turning into a grump. Or grouch, bear, sourpuss, crank. Or curmudgeon, maybe. Ah, too many damned words when one needs no more than one!

Addendum (January 12, 2012)

“I think you’ll find that you became a grump when you started writing curmudgeonly letters to the local newspaper in Reading all those years ago,” writes Will Hughes in response to this piece. “Your grumpiness has reigned ever since.” By the way, this was around the turn of the millennium, when Reading youth started devastating the Forbury Gardens, a wonderful park next to my Reading home. “Cheer up,” Will pleads. “I wonder,” I wrote back. “I’ve been grumpy about this world since very early on.” I did not mention 1968, but that times the onset of my curmudgeonly forays pretty well. “Such sentiments in the young do not go by the name of grumpiness,” I continued. “I suppose that I became grumpy when I reached the ripe old age. Before that I was an angry young man…” There.