Stratford View column - the art of moaning… and keeping elephants out the Avon

THIS week I want to discuss that good old British pastime… moaning.

I stumbled across some amazing statistics recently. A few years ago, some research was done that shows over half of British people moan every day and one-in-five moan more than three times a day. This adds up to 169 hours of moaning every year.

We love a good whinge in this country and I’m all for it. I actually thought those statistics were rather low. My friends and I spend a lot of time complaining to each other and then laughing about our complaints. It’s the basis of a lot of my friendships and certainly the reason behind many of my laughter lines (I refuse to believe it is simply middle-age).

Us Stratfordians are world-class complainers: tourists, markets, traffic, cycle lanes, parking, road surfaces, bin collections and the yoof of today are my personal favourites. No doubt I will be moaning about each of those subjects separately in this column at some point.

Not only do I love a good moan myself, but I love other people’s. I have discovered the best way to observe and get involved in our thriving whingeing community is to join the local Facebook groups. Not only are there a lot of people pointlessly posting about things that have annoyed them, but there are then even more people pointlessly commenting on those posts that the pointless post itself has annoyed them. It is comedy gold for any fan of grouching.

A few months ago, I joined in and posted on one of the Stratford Facebook groups that I would like to throw a custard pie at the person who designed the Maybird car park (another topic for a future column). It was met with multiple laughing emojis and amusing comments, which is the reaction it was designed to illicit. However, among the light-hearted posts I received two outstandingly grumpy responses.

One man posted a lengthy and notably aggressive lecture on how the car park layout is perfectly adequate if only people would learn about their individual car’s turning circle radius, with the added information that a smaller turning circle makes it easy to manoeuvre a vehicle and perhaps people might like to consider this when purchasing their next car.

The second, and my personal favourite, was the man who posted a series of statistics on local car parks and the pros and cons of the Parking Act 2019. Sirs, I doff my cap to you both, for your grumbling was indeed first class.

It turns out that the Bidford Forum on Facebook is a particularly rich source of disgruntlement. For many weeks I read dozens of (understandable) complaints about the closure of the bridge after an Uber driver managed to wedge his Toyota Prius in the weirdest angle possible across the bridge. I still can’t quite work out how he did that. However, recently it has been the erection of a new fence along the river that has caused an outpouring of mithering and associated comedic responses. My favourite being, “It’s to keep elephants out of the river. As you can see there aren’t any, so it’s obviously working”.

Now I know there will be people reading this who are shaking their heads thinking we should all stop complaining and just be happy and grateful. I say these things are not mutually exclusive. Why can’t we do both? I love this town, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I am very happy here and very grateful to call it my home. But, my God, do I love to moan about it too, and I’m happy and grateful that I can.