Why SWB?

I’ve always been a bit of a grump, even as a small child. My mother reports one of my first words as being ‘annoy’ and my granddad used to remark ‘Here she comes, full of complaints’ as I trotted home from a play-date, face like thunder. It was thus only a matter of time before someone pulled me on my perpetual crossness, and this occurred late one Saturday evening, when queuing outside a Spar on Botanic Avenue. It had been an exhausting shift in Acapulco restaurant and I was tired and forlorn. A reveller popping out of the Empire for a few cigarettes innocently asked ‘why the long face’ and was crushed by my curt response. Well, he huffed, “You’re a Sour Wee Bastard, aren’t you?” I rang my mum the next day, and naturally enough, complained about being insulted. Instead of the expected sympathetic response, she almost punctured a lung laughing. “He couldn’t have got it more right!’ she managed as the spasms subsided, and I’ve been known as SWB ever since.