Don't make me drink yogurt. It makes my teeth cough.

Take a stroll down a typical British street and chances are it'll be filled with litter, there'll be some hoodies getting pissed on the street corner, you'll walk past bland overpriced shops with TVs in the window showing our overpaid national football team rubbishly losing; everybody you walk past will ignore you, you'll discover someone's just nicked your wallet (and no one did anything to help), and then you'll almost certainly notice there aren't any politicians around, because they're too out of touch with everyday people.

Yeah, I'm proud to be British. No, really, I genuinely am. I once did an on-line quiz to see how British I am, the results of which showed that I am Bloody British, which made me so jolly happy I had a nice cup of tea and a scone.

One thing I don't like our Britishness though is the idea of the Stiff Upper Lip. I know that this was a trait which served us well when it was invented back in the war, being an integral part of our ability to keep calm and carry on. The problem is that this has become so ingrained in our national psyche that we think this is the epitome of the way we should be. Any acknowledgement that we may be anything less than resolutely strong in the face of adversity is something to be ashamed of, and admitting to feeling a tiny bit sad is tantamount to Winston Churchill waiving the white flag and handing the keys to No. 10 over to Hitler.

I first began to notice this on the forum on the MS Society website. Whenever anyone puts a post up to say that they're struggling with how they're feeling, they almost invariably apologise, saying I'm sorry for moaning and normally I'm so strong and keep it together, I don't know what's happened to me. Now I know MS can mess with our think-tanks a bit, but in these cases it's our national identity that has caused us to lose any sense of perspective. You've got a bloody incurable degenerative disease, that's what's happened to you! If you're permanently shattered, can't walk, have had to give up work, your partner's walked out on you and, oh bugger, you've just wet yourself, I think it's probably fair enough that maybe you're feeling a touch angry or depressed.

Whenever anyone goes through a grievous life event it can be easy to pass comment on how well or badly they're coping. All you need to do is apply the simple formulas 'Feeling sad/being angry/not behaving 'normal' = Coping Badly' and 'Effecting a congenial persona/behaving acceptably = Coping Well'.

Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. I was going to say if your top lip is especially stiff then, if anything, that means you're not coping well, but I don't that's true either. It probably just means you're in denial, and that's a normal part of grieving, giving you time to adjust before you can dare to lift the trapdoor on whatever scary, painful (but certainly not bad) feelings you've got lurking downstairs. So I don't think there's such a thing as coping well or badly. We simply cope the way we're coping. I guess the worse you can do is to get stuck in any particular feeling or get unhealthily attached to a coping mechanism, but even then that will depend on what support you've got around you, what you've seen modelled, or what type of personality you have. Having said that, if you were to embark on a violent crime spree because you lost your job, I'd be tempted to say you weren't coping all that well. But still, there's nothing wrong with feeling a bit upset or noticing a little quiver in your upper lip because of it. It doesn't mean you're a pathetic, shameful failure of a human being.

So. Feel sad if you're feeling sad. Just as long as you don't go mawkishly turning on the waterworks with the faux sincerity of an X Factor contestant. That just wouldn't be cricket.