Think bad, speak good

I’m gradu­ally com­ing to the con­clu­sion that sud­den and irra­tional bad moods are a good thing, just as long as you have the will­power to let your­self boil over on the inside whilst main­tain­ing a bright and sunny (or at least stoical) exter­ior to the world.

Let me provide you with an example.

The time is exactly 5.26pm, earlier this even­ing. I enter the main front door of the house and start check­ing the mail before going upstairs to my flat. My land­lady sud­denly appears — she only lives round the corner and still pops in reg­u­larly to see if she’s got any post. She says hello brightly and then, look­ing at her watch, asks: “Have you got the day off, then?”

Moment­ary pause on my part. Then, deep inside, I explode with apo­plectic rage:

“Oh, right. I see. Because it’s not yet half past five on a week­day even­ing, you auto­mat­ic­ally assume I’ve taken the day off, and that I’ve been lying around watch­ing day­time TV and have only just emerged from my flat to finally check my post. Is that it? Is it? Well, for your bloody inform­a­tion — not that it’s any of your fuck­ing busi­ness, you under­stand — this is the first time I’ve been home before 6.00pm in months, and the first time in the past week and a half that I’ve not dragged myself home between 8.00pm and 11.00pm due to the huge pres­sure of work. So, no, I’ve not fuck­ing well taken the fuck­ing day off. And any­way, isn’t it about time you got your post redir­ec­ted? I’m fed up with con­stantly find­ing you in the hall­way sift­ing through the let­ters. You’ve got a bloody nerve when you charge me nearly two-thirds of my monthly salary to rent that one-bedroom flat upstairs. Then you come in here and sug­gest I’ve just been laz­ing around, and — ”

Out­wardly, how­ever, I’m smil­ing. Beam­ing radi­antly. True, there’s pos­sibly a slightly men­acing glint in my eye, but my land­lady undoubtedly mis­takes that for my nor­mal charm­ing friend­li­ness. As I turn to her, I say:

“Ha ha! If only! Wouldn’t a day off be nice, eh? No, I’ve just got home early, which is nice! Oh look, here’s some of your post …”

A release of pent-up anger without the dire social con­sequences, then. I felt a lot bet­ter after that, thanks for asking.