Have you ever had that experience when two separate strands of thought collide?  It happened to me on Monday evening, commuting home from work, when I was simultaneously struck by both a Train of Thought and by a Little Irritation of Life.  The catalyst for such a divine synchronicity of ideas?  Charlotte Reed’s latest May the Thoughts Be with You cartoon in the Evening Standard.

What came first?  The Train of Thought or the Little Irritation of Life?  I can’t write both blogs simultaneously; I need to organise my reasoning.  Trying to be objective, I am of the opinion that the Train of Thought had actually been there in the background, simmering away, for some considerable period of time.  However, it was only when it clashed with a Little Irritation of Life, that my bile bubbled over sufficiently to put pen to paper.

The Boomtown Rats may have declared that they didn’t like Mondays way back in 1979; well, I am their echo for the 21^st century.  I don’t like Monday Motivations.  I don’t like the Monday Motivation hashtag on social media; I don’t like the Monday Motivation cartoons in the Evening Standard.  I don’t want to be told to feel positive.  I want to be free to wallow in the misery of the start-of-the-week, rail-network commute.  I don’t want to feel calm; discover my inner karma; be at one with the world.  I want to rage.  Rage against the 9-to-5; rage against the machine; rage against London Northwestern and their new timetable.

But… I’ll tell you what I don’t want.  Amidst all my normal, perfectly-healthy, post-work, Monday commuting rage, I don’t want to be reminded of an additional, abstract, entirely home-based rage: trying to find the end of the Sellotape roll.

There is only so much rage that one man can deal with at any one time.

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree likes to keep his rage strictly compartmentalised.