DO you work long hours and spend much of your time going nowhere fast in increasingly frustrating traffic jams or overcrowded trains while constantly worrying about the future and the state of your pension? If you, like me, are aged 35 to 54, you are probably feeling grumpy.

For we are the most miserable people in Britain. New research shows we are constantly angry, stressed out and fed up with the rat race. But, having spent one day last weekend at Beamish Museum, learning about how miners and their families lived in 1913, I wonder what they would have made of our lot.

Life may appear tough to us, but all suffering is relative. And, to those miners of our grandparents' generation, what a crowd of wimps we must appear to be.

Forget inconvenient hold-ups on the A1, they had to walk a mile-and-a-half down dark, damp tunnels to build walls and put up wooden supports, using their own equipment and in their own time, before they could even start to earn any money scraping out coal from dingy seams.

Conditions were appalling and four men a day were killed in accidents. When this happened, far from offering any security for miners' families, employers threw wives and children out of their tied homes. And there was a world war just around the corner. Thankfully, those days are long gone. But we don't even have to look that far back to find people worse off than us. Just imagine how the next generation must feel.

After all, aren't today's middle-aged responsible for buying up all the cheap council housing stock? And we managed to get onto the property ladder before house prices soared so high that many under-30s now find themselves priced out of the market. We were lucky enough to get grants to go to university. They are saddling themselves with huge debts before they even get started. And, thanks to the diet and lifestyle our generation has imposed on them, they will be suffering the effects of ill health, from obesity to heart disease and diabetes, for years to come.

If we're mad and miserable now, just think how they're going to feel in 20 years' time.

JUST a little moan about Beamish Museum (well, I am one of the grumbling generation) - why does it have to close so early in summer? It would be impossible to get round all exhibits before 5pm, even on a quiet day. We had to wait 45 minutes to get down the mine and gave up on the miners' cottages because of queues. By the time we got to the town and the sweet shop, where the children longed to see sweets being made, it was 3pm and we were told, gruffly, that demonstrations were over. By 4.30pm, as the last trams left to return to the visitor centre, there was no time to see the steam trains, manor house and a few other exhibits. For this, we had travelled an hour-and-a-half and paid £12 for adults and £6 for children. Why can't Beamish stay open until 7pm and give people a chance to see what they have to offer?

IT is good to see staff at Newcastle Airport being extra vigilant in the light of terrorist threats. But confiscating a Bishop's crook, and classifying it as an offensive weapon, was probably taking things a bit too far. I know debates in the Anglican Church can get a bit heated, but a bishop is hardly a security threat. Unless there is a C of E equivalent of al-Qa'ida I haven't heard of.

IF those protestors spreading fear and alarm about the danger paedophiles pose to our children in the wake of the Soham murders really wanted to protect youngsters from harm, why don't they campaign for better road safety? Bad driving kills many more youngsters but, sadly, is not as emotive an issue.