Monday 9th July; Miserable Faces Know Their Places

Being Monday, it’s that time of the week when I get to read some column inches from a man who knows what I’m thinking and thinks what I know to be true: Charlie Brooker.  His weekly column for the Guardian is what makes Monday’s bearable.
His take on life this week concerns the ‘dour faced’ Scot Andy Murray. Known mostly for his tennis playing temper tantrums, this is not the focus of Charlie’s attentions in his column, but rather the way in which he is used as an example of miserable faced people.  Charlie puts it to us that Andy Murray is not miserable at all, he just happens to have that kind of face.  Should he look happy anyway? He’s got more on his mind than just the way his face looks.  At least he doesn’t look like some village idiot!  Concentration is also to blame for the lack of muscles positioned in a U shape.  I can feel for him because, like him I also have the sort of face that rests in such a way that it looks like the world is upon my shoulders. Invariably it feels like it but I digress.  The only people I’ve ever met with a permanent smile on their faces tend to be a bit stupid anyway.  I wonder what Charles Atlas had to look so happy about in that photo where he literally had the world upon his shoulders. That’s something we will never know.  Maybe it was just the knowledge that it wasn’t really the world but merely a beach ball with the world printed on it.  Let me ask you this, do you walk around with a beaming smile on your face all the time? I bet you don’t.  Surely if any of us did that we would be called crazy, weird or even lunatics!  Why then, do people feel the need to come up to me, in the street, and say “cheer up, it may never happen”.  How do they know that? They don’t know if ‘it’ has happened, if ‘it’ is about to happen, or when ‘it’ will happen.  Whatever ‘it’ is I’m not sure, but if they know ‘it’ may never happen why they insist on telling me that.  If ‘it’ happens to them I won’t be telling them to cheer up, I’ll be welcoming them to my world.  Is it someone else’s place to tell others to ‘cheer up’ or ‘it may never happen’? No, I think not.  Get the hell away from me and look at your own face!  That would be like me walking up to people who are smiling and telling them that they shouldn’t do that in case the wind changes direction!