Getting up steam

"Locomotive Breath"

In the shuffling madness

Of the locomotive breath,

Runs the all-time loser,

Headlong to his death.

He feels the piston scraping --

Steam breaking on his brow --

Thank God, he stole the handle and

The train won't stop going

No way to slow down.

Ian Anderson.

Time to introduce a spot of bile and invective into these somewhat moribund blogs. Here I am pushing 50 - which I am assured is a lot easier than dragging it - and I find myself getting crosser by the day.

Everything enrages me, and I'm shouting at things. The shelves in supermarkets for example. Bicycles (not cyclists, just bicycles). Happy little sparrows, just for being so damn chirpy. Computer monitors. Actually I think everyone must bellow at their computer monitors once in a while. But doing it four times an hour may be excessive.

This morning I was shouting at the radio because some idiot politician (Des "two jobs" Browne) was justifying Gordon Brown's continuing tenure by blathering on about how some changes or other were good for the environment.

"Don't you realise that right now people don't give a flying stuff about the environment?" I raged "Not unless they live in a hedge and knit yoghurt for a living? What people care about is whether they can pay the damn mortgage this month."

And then I got told to shut up because I was disturbing the cat. And we don't even have a cat.

Not that I have a political view on this. I don't think politicians are crooks, or liars, just that they are blindingly incompetent. All of them.

With his background and education, if David Cameron was any good at something he'd have been snapped up by a merchant bank called Slater Mulhone Mdingo Osterriech and making a billion pounds a year instead of leading the Tory Party.

This shouting at things can be particularly dangerous in traffic at this time of year, as we drive with our windows open. One day I'm going to let loose a stream of invective, and some man-mountain will unfold himself from his smart car and beat me to a pulp with a wheel brace.

But on the plus side, at least the missus will get my pension early. Which is nice. I feel increasingly like Micheal Douglas in Falling Down, going madder and madder as I head into the fourth recession I've experienced, and I feeling increasingly sorry for my children, who unlike I did in the early '80s won't be allowed to have the luxury of a dole-cheque to fall back upon.

Not that I'm saying I'm about to go into a burger joint with a sub-machine gun and take out the breakfast display. But that's only because I don't have a sub-machine gun.

Hey ho, on with the motley