I have a thought.

Ha. Today I have a THOUGHT for you.

It concerns rage.

After yesterday’s blah, I discovered today that I was suffering from fury. It crept up on me early, as I listened to a gentleman on Thought for the Day (which makes me pretty cross most mornings) talk about having a ‘vegetarian lifestyle’. The very word lifestyle makes me spit, but a vegetarian one makes my head spin off. What can it mean?

Then, as I was having a most uncharacteristic argument with the red mare, who decided she did not want to move from her nice friend and her nice field and her nice breakfast, I found another pocket of fury. This one was to do with a certain human not behaving in a way I would like that human to behave. This is not a pretty reflection on my character. I like to think I am all each to each, and NOT CONTROLLING AT ALL, and perfectly shimmering with tolerance and liberalism and laissez-faire. In fact, I quite often think, horridly, that this person should do this, or that person bloody well could do that. Then I have to read myself lectures in my head about the horrors of judgement and I feel very small and rather less than the person I would wish to be.

The mare finally consented to move, and as I walked out with her, I attempted to get all this into some kind of order in my head. As I contemplated the particular human who had made me so cross, I told myself that A. getting furious about the perceived lack of doing what I wanted had no utility and B. that it was a lowering reflection on all the things I like to believe I hold dear. It was also rank hypocrisy, since I loathe it when people tell me how I should be living or behaving or functioning in the world.

On the other hand, rage must go somewhere. The human had done something careless and mildly hurtful, as humans often do. It was not big enough to warrant major confrontation, but it had lacerated my spirits. The problem was that the resentment at the slight hurt had ballooned into a general anger at half that poor person’s choices in life. (Could do this; should do that. That was the really ugly and uncalled-for part.)

My question is, my thought is: where does one put these sudden squalls of fury, the ones that don’t really do you or anyone else any good? I think that anger is a correct response in some situations – in the face of bigotry, hatred, idiot politicians, avaricious bankers, dangerous drivers, out of control regimes – but a lot of the time it is not appropriate and mostly to do with one. Sometimes, when I get cross it is warranted. Sometimes, it is all about my own self and not about the other person at all.

But one can’t simply stuff it down into the internal cupboard of doom or one gets ulcers and drinks too much.

Where is the correct place for it?

My rider is: I think anger is especially hard for women. Even now, in the age of the power female and the ladette, or whatever the Daily Fail calls them now, there is still a whiff of sugar and spice and all things nice. We ladies are not really supposed to be cross. Gentleman can parlay rage into entire careers – Peter Hitchens and Jeremy Clarkson are paid to be livid. I’m not sure there is an equivalent female version. (Actually, Melanie Phillips is absolutely furious, almost all of the time, but I do not think she would ever be offered a gig on Top Gear.)

I do often have a sense of failure when I fly into rages, as if I am undermining my own biological imperative, even though I don’t really believe in a biological imperative, which makes me even crosser and more confused. I find anger uncomfortable and sometimes frightening. I want to think the best of things and of people and to be at ease in the world. So when the snapping monster of ire uncurls itself within me, my instinct is to run away.

Today, I’m sitting with it. I’m breathing. I’m sharing with the group.

Too much?

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from today:

Skies over HorseBack:

Sweetly muddy and furry foal, especially for my friend The Television Producer, who always cheers me up, even from five hundred miles away:

Herself, on our morning walk, looking as if she never had a mulish moment in her whole wide life. (The Dear Readers now know the sorry truth. But then, nobody’s perfect, not even my old duchess.):

Some trees:

On, on

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Out in the world, people are doing serious things. The Conservatives are having their party conference. Journalists are asking questions about the strategy for growth. Boris Johnson is making excellent jokes.

Here, I think: I know I have to cut that paragraph, but oh, oh, oh it hurts.

Sometimes, I watch myself circling around a point, like an aeroplane put in a holding pattern. Round and round I go, and never quite make the runway. I stomp into the kitchen. Come on, I say to myself, as I make a ham sandwich: what are you really trying to say? Then I imagine I am being interviewed on Woman’s Hour. Under the forensic examination of Jenni Murray I may not waffle or equivocate.

This is actually quite a useful tool for writing in general. If you find yourself going a bit opaque or abstract or tangential, all frailties from which I suffer mightily, imagine you are going to have to explain yourself to Jeremy Paxman. Imagine that arched eyebrow of surprise, the quizzical voice, the terrifying Paxo ‘Really?’ spoken in his ironical falsetto. That will sharpen you up.

Sometimes I debate with myself. I do it whilst I am cooking. On the one hand, I say, out loud; but on the other hand…I think the out loud thing is quite important. Thoughts can cohere when said aloud into a room.

It’s a bit one step forward, one step back at the moment. I feel stretched, like a bit of old elastic in the hands of an antic child. Come on, come on, I say; it’s only a book. Yeah, yeah, I say, that’s like saying it’s only your arms and legs.

I woke this morning filled with inchoate rage. It’s a concatenation of things. It’s racing deadlines and people behaving badly and things not working and demands being made and irrational upsets. It’s life, mostly. Sometimes anger is the correct response. I am not especially good at it though. I think I grew up with the notion of girls being sugar and spice and all things nice, which is what held sway at the time. Even though I was a furious tomboy, always climbing trees and ripping holes in my trousers, there is still a lingering sense that fury is not what the ladies should do. (Although I do not quite know why I think that, even subliminally, since I do not regard myself as A Lady.)

Anyway, I took this morning’s anger, sat down at my desk, and threw it all at my work. Yeah, vague sentences, take that. Ha, ill-conceived notions, have this. Tap tap tap went the fingers; delete delete delete went the delete button.

And by lunchtime, I had some sense of achievement, and I felt human again.

 

No time to take the camera out today, so some quick pictures from the last few days, because you must have something pretty to gaze on:

 

Daily Pigeon glory, as now mandated by law:

I know I say this practically every day, but oh oh that face. I start to think that she has gone into adorable overdrive, just to see how much I can take.

The hill: