| I AM TERRIFIED by the emotions flying around my kitchen. The rage seethes and bubbles like a cauldron of hot tar; the lid buckling and barely held down. But then, it was my choice to listen to the radio phone-in.
These days, we are not so much New Age Britain, as New Rage Britain: the land where everyone is righteous, everyone is angry, and everyone will tell it as it is. And how is it? Well, it’s a flaming disgrace, what with all these personal details lost, and car clamping, and mortgage rises, and knife-carrying youths, and expensive petrol, and prisoners released, and corrupt politicians, and cheap alcohol, and fat-cats, and Northern Rock, and where are the police? And what are our children learning? And what is the Government doing? And is the Archbishop a Muslim or something?
This is rip-off Britain, where everyone is getting right royally ripped off by everyone else; New-Rage Britain, where the problem is not me. It is Angry Land, where the rich just see scroungers and sick-note-Sallies; where the middle class feels squeezed, unloved, and way too decent for its own good; where the poor just see a load of soft-heads with gardens, who don’t know they’re born; and, generally, where the centre can no longer hold: an anarchy of festering resentment loosed upon this green and pleasant land.
The corrosive power of untreated anger is not hard to discern in ourselves. The trouble is, very few of us have been fortunate enough to see anger well-modelled. We have seen it poorly modelled, of course: we have seen it repressed and turn into depression; we have seen it unleashed in random and savage ways; we have seen it denied and become resentment; we have seen it demonise others; we have seen it ignored and transmute within into uncaring and stubborn ways; we have seen it go underground, and seep out in snide and bitchy comments; and we have seen it buried only to rise again as polite envy and spite. But well-handled?
Is there an alchemist out there who can turn the wild and desperate energy of rage into energy of a different kind? Possibly, but the dear soul had best not expect a hero’s welcome or garlands of flowers. Most dread the coming of one such as this; most fear the alchemist, for their rage is how they define themselves, their fury furtively feeding their identity. And who wants to lose their identity? The redemption of their wrath would mean the redemption of their past and themselves — and that’s a redemption too far in Angry Land.
So, as I say, everyone on the phone is furious — and, to be honest, everyone has a point. As the book of Proverbs reminds us, the last one to speak is always the most convincing — until the next one.
But what am I to do, in the small kitchen of my psyche? The kettle’s steaming, the saucepan’s boiling over, and the radio is red-hot. It’s all the rage, apparently. |
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