Angerland

I’m facing the prospect of a holiday. The problem is not that I’m indispensable to the nation’s mental health or that my employers will curl up into an organizational ball and gently rock for the duration rather that holidays represent an almost impossible challenge for me to relax in my own company. This morning someone asked me why I wasn’t catching the last train out of Olympic city as anyone with a tunnel pass will do this week. I blurted out an uncomfortable truth, “there’s no point, I really only want to take a holiday from being me”. Oh Mary mother of god. This has been the wallpaper of my identity since I can remember but it has been thrust into the fourth dimension during 2012. Taking a holiday from being me is merely self-preservation when you’re this angry. I’m so angry I can’t risk being stuck at Heathrow or lost luggage because over the last year I have become unpredictable, volcanic and dirty dirty mouthed. In my defence here’s why. Redundancy, poverty on my doorstep, London transport, Olympics, teenagers on the Central line, unpaid corporate tax, Serco, internships, being unwaged, precarious, vulnerable, dying pensions, welfare reform, death of the NHS, the end of protest, gimps in control, the price of FOOD, Boris with a microphone, Work Programme, the revived class system, victimization of anyone with any problems whatsoever, punishment of human frailty, implosion of every institution I believed in and the death of compassion. G4S. At the risk of sounding sarcastic, given that I am fully and legitimately angry, what wholesome attitude could I adopt towards it? It might lie in the understanding that anger is necessary for change. It’s a myth that getting angry won’t solve anything, unlike the one about looking like a sweaty faced troll which is a valid point. I actually believe that getting angry is the only viable way to challenge what’s going wrong around here. Without it, my concerns are just that, mine. So I’m spending this summer refining the art of getting angry. All well and good you say, but what does this mean given that a week on a beach left with your own thoughts would be hazardous to what remains of our tatty ol’ ecosystem? Well, ahem, you’ll be relieved to hear I’ve chosen a sustainable option and will be spending my holidays building Angerland, the theme park for getting angry. Angerland will be built amongst the ruins of social housing that used to be the Elephant and Castle. We will create olympic standard spitting tracks, and hold master classes on Spitting with Confidence, International Swearing, Nutting for Beginners and Harmonic Screaming. Big sticks, fridge diving and bungee jumping minus the bungee. Services will include an authentic anorexic canteen and individual padded booths for the anger novice. Throughout Angerland there will be piped music that you can only scream to and my personal favourite the Passive Aggressive Obstacle Course where you are the obstacle. Angerland houserules exclude manners or reasoned argument so I’ll be taking a break this August from blogging. It has been a total delight blogging for you this year and I hope you will join me again in September when I come back, refreshed, with a cunning plan about how to survive work and undoubtedly still very angry.