All's Well that (sort of) Ends Well.

I was incensed by a continuing problem in Sainsbury’s today, so I asked to see the manager and had a bloody good shout at him. He told me to calm down so he could explain the reason for it. I declined to calm down because I’d heard the same old excuse several times and it didn’t wash. I said a few other things, too, and told him to bloody well do something about it. He walked away.

So did I feel better? No, not really. I continued to pour scorn internally on the way things are done these days, especially when it comes to managers abdicating responsibility for things which go wrong in their store. Besides, I don’t particularly enjoy getting angry. Anger is a negative emotion and I get enough of those as it is.

But my mother and brother were the same. They were (and I remain) the sort of people who try hard to be reasonable and rational, even through gritted teeth, until we’re pushed an inch too far. And then we explode and feel inclined to rip heads from shoulders. ‘Aren’t you fierce?’ said somebody in an office where I worked once. No, I’m not fierce at all. I just have a congenital fuse, and when the fizzing reaches the end the powder blows. Being congenital, I suppose I’ll just have to live with it.

Meanwhile, a staff member who was privy to the outburst looked me in the eye and said quietly: ‘I like you.’