IT must be the social scientists' silly season, the time of the year when not much is happening and therefore an opportune moment to release to the media the findings of your latest bit of research.

Yes, the experts have been at it again, spending thousands to arrive at answers anyone with a tad of common sense could have told them for free. In the past couple of weeks, three such projects have been reported in the strictly "Everyone knows that" category.

One bit of research showed that we, the English, don't talk to each other as much as we used to. That was in the days when housewives would chat over the garden wall and men would meet at the pub or workingman's club.

These days, women go out to work and no-one goes to the pub any more: it's cheaper to stay at home with a video and a can of supermarket lager.

Another bunch of experts came up with another fact that everyone but trendy, sixties-obsessed educationalists knew to be true: that in school, children learn more if they sit at desks drawn up in lines, rather than around tables facing each other. In the latter situation, they discovered, children tend to talk to each other and play games rather than getting on with the work in hand.

Well I never - fancy that! Children playing games - who would have thought it?

When I was nobbut a lad, the desks at Beggarsdale Primary were laid in lines that would have brought a tear of pride to the eyes of a Guards sergeant major. And anyone caught talking to his or her neighbour got a thwack over the knuckles with a ruler.

It couldn't happen now, though, even if the village school had not been closed yonks ago: any teacher raising a ruler would be off to jail and professional ruin before his or her feet touched the ground.

Trouble is, the third piece of nonsense - which I heard being discussed by a group of psychiatrists on the radio - did have a bit of sound but sombre sense behind it.

This was the result of a national survey which showed, so the experts declared, that one in three of all British people feel miserable most of the time. And the younger you are (children excepted) the more miserable you are likely to be.

The wise men discussing this proposition came up with a strange cause for this aberration: because standards of living are so high and get higher every year, people have more choice about what they do with their lives - and they are miserable because they are frightened of making the wrong choice!

In other words, we were happier in the bad old days when having food on the table - any food - was the most important thing in life than we are now when we can't make up our minds whether we should have monkfish and prawns in white wine or that leg of lamb roast with garlic, honey, and rosemary.

This last proposition caused something of a stir in the Beggars' Arms last week because, in the British countryside at present, things are so bad economically that we seem to be heading back to the depression of the 1930s. So there you have it: come and live in the country where you can be poor but happy!

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.