Hello and Welcome to all Practising or Aspiring Whingers

Whingeing has a long history. Some believe that it goes back to Adam and Eve, though given that they had no money, no clothes, no house, and only one apple between them, yet still thought they were in Paradise, they were possibly amongst the least whiney of our forebears. Surely in fact it was God who began the whingeing, and continued it through most of the Old Testament?

The English have been inclined to hwinsian and the Scots to quhinge since the earliest stages of their language, stretching back almost to the time of the Conqueror (who, I admit, to anticipate any Caledonian whingeing,  arrived in 1066 in England, 1072 in Scotland); even in fact before the English were called Whingeing Poms. (I note that the dictionary defines a Pom as British, but has any Scot - with the possible exception of Mike Denness - ever been referred to as a Pom?)

Joyce, Beckett and Synge all used the term, but in 1983 it finally rose above the world of mere literary giants by appearing in the Times, and much of the nation has whinged ever since.

One of my favourite stories is of the shop steward who called a mass meeting of members and announced what he considered a well negotiated and advantageous settlement in that wages were doubled, holidays trebled, daily hours halved and they would only have to work on Fridays. From the back came the response, “What? Every bloody Friday?” Good man!

This ability to find something wrong in everything is the mark of the Advanced Whinger. Whilst you may aspire to such heights, no inexperienced whinger should attempt this kind of thing until having mastered the basics.

This blog-based beginner’s guide is not a practical do-it-yourself step-by-step instruction manual. As even the most inexperienced whinger knows these never accord with reality, whether they are of the written type which seem to be created by running a computer translation programme on the Serbo-Croat weather forecast, or the wordless illustration type which seem to be recycling the storyboards for 1950s Hungarian cartoons. Instead it will be an anthology of my personal whinges which you may use as templates to create your own.

An examination of quotations about whingeing (which for Googling purposes may need to be spelt ‘complaining’) will find a large number which advise against the practice; but I prefer to take my stand with the character in Princess Ida:

Whene'er I spoke sarcastic joke replete with malice spiteful,
This people mild politely smil'd, and voted me delightful!
Ah! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long when all goes right and nothing goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat with nothing whatever to grumble at.