HURRAH! At last we are told it's good to be grumpy. We have been let off the leash thanks to a professor who has studied the effects of positive and negative emotions and published his findings in an Australian science journal.

In experiments he discovered that grumpier people were more likely to get problems sorted out than their sunny-side-up colleagues. They also made fewer errors.

So, what's made me grumpy lately?

GRUMP ONE: The education secretary's announcement that schoolchildren as young as seven are to be offered 'career-related learning'.

How ridiculous. Young children should be allowed to dream of being astronauts or ballet dancers without being expected to provide a CV or attend a Powerpoint presentation.

Long before I was old enough to give serious consideration to my future, I was puzzling over whether to be a fashion designer or a missionary. I couldn't draw, but I did go to Sunday school, so I expect any career advisers would have quickly shunted me off to a convent before I'd had chance to say goodbye to Wilfred, my woolly rabbit.

GRUMP TWO: The alleged bullying of the first female Beefeater by her male colleagues. An investigation by Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that looks after the Tower of London, is under way, but I'd like to put in my two penn'th.

As it took 500 years for a woman to even be allowed in this post, I suggest that if anyone is found guilty, she sticks her pike where it won't quickly be forgotten[2026] or retrieved. Thank you.

GRUMP THREE: The dumbing down of GCSE science. Recent questions included: Give an example of a) a legal recreational drug and b) an illegal recreational drug. Good heavens, even I, who struggled to light a Bunsen burner, could answer that, but it wouldn't make me a scientist.

I'd rather remain a science illiterate than get a qualification under false pretences, wouldn't you? GRUMP FOUR: Anyone interviewed who says they have been on an 'emotional rollercoaster'.

I've often complained about it but this ghastly, irritating cliché still appears so regularly in interviews that it now induces nausea whenever I hear it.

It has GOT TO STOP.