Advice to cure ennui

Sometimes you have those days where you just feel cheesed off for no reason at all.  Utterly normal occurrences seem like they are happening expressly to irritate you, perfectly civil requests grate on you and every little task seems a bit too much trouble.

These are the days when you need to dip into The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book for a little snippet of life advice from the chapter A Great Thought Every Day. Little did that (presumably) long gone, un-named compiler of great thoughts imagine that one day, 81 years later, a slightly grumpy middle aged lady would be pleased by their choice of a Chinese proverb for 7th November,

It is easier to know how to do something than to do it.

Never a truer word spoken this side of Beijing.

Equally pleasing, if a little more baffling, is the Russian proverb for the 8th November

It is better to be lame than always seated. 

I'm going to ponder that one as I limp off to do the washing up.