ANGER ________ For my daughters and anyone else interested. CASE STUDY of an angry man, husband, father and grandfather.     I think this essay is for me rather than anybody else, so please excuse the self-indulgence.     I am an angry person. I have always been so. I don't know why, exactly, but it's a truth of my nature. I am also a happy person. Angry does not necessarily mean violent. Anger is a force. It can be directed in a positive way as well as a negative way. Anger is often (probably most often) due to frustration of some kind.     For some things, I have infinite patience and for other things, I have very little. I don't like things that don't work as expected. This is too much for those things that haven't even asked for my patience but they are consigned to the bin with much swearing and so forth. I'm not proud of this. I know it is a failing and therefore negative. This, however, is only true of material objects, not live ones, fortunately.     Where my anger comes from is a mystery to me; but it is there and I need to cope with it. It is sometimes not easy.     I think the anger comes from frustration.     As a very young child, I would bash my head against the cot into which I was placed. I can remember this.     I lived within the same room as my parents in a dingy ground-floor flat in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, having been born in July, 1944, during WW2.     I was born in an Anderson shelter during a doodle-bug raid. For my mother, a very sensitive woman (and what woman isn't!), it must have been dreadful. One cannot conceive (let alone give birth) to such a notion.     My frustrations came from my mother, who had endured bombings, being an ambulance driver during the Blitz and so forth. Tough for her; I admire her for that. And it all stemmed from a conception (about which I will never know) and a biological memory no-one can comprehend.     So I was frustrated, at the breast and later still. I became a loner then; it has continued, although I am also a survivor; an angry survivor at that.     It seems from 'Day One' that I was opposed to control over my person. I always hated 'Empire Day' and the waving of flags (even as a very small boy). I have retained that 'hatred' to this day. The 'hatred' has changed to a feeling, not an emotion. 'Flag-waving' is the cause of our present World predicament, especially as it is brain-washed into us (those that let it).     But, at present, leave politics out of it.     The anger that I feel against certain things, is more rarely with me these days, as I approach 60 years old. But it can rear its head at odd moments. It is nothing to do with any sort of drink, drugs or anything I can put my finger on, because its always been there, nesting under my personality. Anyway, I may drink a little but I don't take any drugs and never have done. I am disgustingly healthy and always have been. As I get older, I get more healthy, it seems. This may sound strange but I think maybe it is because I have generally found a way out from this anger. Reading these articles, the reader can see this anger.     In a sense, this anger is not 'channelled', since I have to write. It's always been inside me, though I only started writing when I was 12 years old. The fact that I write almost about the same thing every time but in different ways and perhaps contexts, is interesting. I think, by continually pursuing the same basic notions, this has helped manage my anger behaviour.     I am not a violent person, quite the contrary, I dislike any form of violence and refuse to be part of it, even by listening to others' violent behaviour.     I am a school teacher, qualified in English and teaching children with Special Needs. The latter I have been teaching for over twenty years. Students and young people keep me young. The trite notion that boys only grow into bigger boys, is a bit sad. What's wrong with a bigger boy? I keep young (in mind, though older in body) and my students relate to that. They see my overall happiness. I enjoy being silly and I don't have a problem with that. At least I'm not an older 'stick-in-the-mud'.     This overall happiness does not mean that I have led a charmed life; quite the contrary. But I, as I said, I am a survivor. I've done more things in my life than most would do in two or three life-times. I keep very busy. Even the other day I happened to overhear a conversation in a chemist shop I was passing through which went something like:     "I asked him what it was like to be retired."     He said: "I'm bored, there is nothing to do."     This is very sad. Sometimes I wish I could say that there was nothing to do, but I can't; there is always plenty to do. People ask me why I never watch television or read newspapers. There are two reasons: One, I can't find any value in either of them (it's mostly lies and fake, anyway) and, two, I have too many others things to do that are creative, not destructive.     So, I can't explain the anger in me. I feel that explanations sometimes cover up reasons, so I don't bother too much. Maybe a good rant and rave is as good as a bout of crying. Maybe this is part of our survival mechanism, I don't know. But it helps to get it off one's chest, as they say.

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