Capricorn

Right, repeat after me, 'Capricorns are captivating.' Say it again. Got it? Good. Now remember it, and forget what you might have heard about these folk being morose and melancholic. You will find some Goats with a grouse, because there are positive and negative folks in every sign, but a together Goat can be gorgeous.

Let's get the worst over first with this sign. Some Capricorns can be the original wet blankets, moaning and misanthropic, complaining and carping, and generally being gloomy old things. You'll look at them and think 'I don't want to know you.' But if you bother to get to know them, you can have the time of your life. Talk about giggle!

One of the tremendous traits of this bunch is their superb sense of humor and wit that's as dry as a bone, but much more fun. They can take the mickey out of everything including themselves, which makes them very endearing indeed. And they really do act the goat, making you laugh until your sides split. Once you've glimpsed the sensational side of this sign, you can turn a blind eye to its more triste traits, because you'll have found the silver lining to the Capricorn cloud. (And the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, if the Goat has Taurus rising.)

Some negative Capricorns can pick holes in everything even if they hit the jackpot at bingo, they'll moan about having to spend all that money. The poor things can't express their emotions, either, and will bottle up all their feelings and frustrations.

When you meet a Capricorn, expect them to act older than their years. Goats age in the opposite way to the rest of us, behaving as if they were fifty when they're only five, and seven when they're seventy. This means that Capricoms make elderly-seeming babies and young-at-heart pensioners. When the rest of us are being put out to grass, Goats are just coming into their own!

This is a sign that believes in experience, with a capital 'E'. They never have an easy life until they've blown out all the candles on their thirtieth birthday cakes. Until then, life will have been one long struggle; the only way for them to survive is to learn by experience. (Capricorns hate wasting anything!) Many of them will have had cramped childhoods, awful adolescences and terrible twenties. But they'll have terrific thirties, fantastic forties even naughty nineties!

There are two types of Goat the ones who cavort and curvet up the crags to the summit of their own mountainsides, and the ones who are domestic, and like to potter about their own pieces of pasture, never straying far from the fireside. Capricorns are Cardinal, making them astoundingly ambitious, and even the domestic ones will be determined to do well. Success for them, though, isn't totally based on boodle (although they'd never refuse owt for nowt!); honour, public position and status all smell sweet to them,

Capricorns need security, which they get from the tried, true and tested. They love history, and anything with a past (this could mean you), because then they feel safe. Capricorns are conservative, canny and cautious, and are suspicious of new-fangled things, until they get used to them. They hate to Oy in the face of convention.

They're very wary of wearing out their wallets, too. They believe that if they take care of the farthings, the pennies will look after themselves. More positive Goats would call themselves careful, and will be generous with their loot when they've got it, and laugh about it when they haven't. (Always with a note of caution in their grin!)

Guilt is a very Goaty thing, and some Capricorns thrive on it, putting everyone through the mill, including themselves. They can set themselves impossibly high ideals, and almost galactic goals, and then hate themselves when they fail to reach them. Because just as they hate waste, they also can't abide failure. (It's a good job they're Imbued with endurance and endeavour!) They are deeply determined and disciplined, so can drive themselves to hit heights others only dream of.

But not all Goats are quite so positive. Some delight in the doldrums, like grumpy old Eeyore in Winnie-the-Pooh a donkey who's always down in the dumps. But still everyone adored him. In fact, with a little understanding, you are sure to have fun with even the most morose Goat: laugh with them, but never at them, and you'll never feel down!