Screaming

Yesterday I sat in our car (a clapped out Peugeot 109) in a suburb of Brussels and screamed for a long time. I screamed F***, F***, F*** over and over again very loudly. The reason for this - or at least the superficial reason - was that I was trying to drive to an appointment and despite having set out in good time, and having a map, I just couldn't find where I needed to go. After I'd been driving around the same few streets for about twenty minutes I stopped the car and started screaming. I've done quite a bit of screaming recently. After the IVF failed I sat on the kitchen floor and beat a roasting tin onto the tiled floor for about twenty minutes. I've heard that other people hit telephone directories with rolling pins. That could be worth a try but it wouldn't make much noise, would it? Whereas the roasting tin and the tiles make a satisfactorily loud noise as they meet. As I smashed the tin down again and again I was interested to see whether the tiles would break, or whether the tin would buckle, but neither suffered any damage. Physical objects are surprisingly robust, it seems. Not like the human heart.