WHO LET HER OUT?

The other day i was baking a lemon poppyseed cake from scratch and as i transferred it piping hot from the loaf tin onto a plate (because i had slightly overcooked it and didn't want it to get any harder) it fell apart into pieces. I had a huge strop and slammed my fist on the kitchen counter before storming off to have a HOT, HOT bath - scalding in fact. My bad mood lasted around 18 minutes or so, and as I sat fuming in the bath, skin red and no doubt drying out at an alarming rate - i realised that I had serious problems if a failed cake could send me plunging into the depths of despair.

Now in all fairness, a lemon poppyseed cake is fairly involved to make. You have to painstakingly grate the lemon rind (such a pain as you often catch your skin on the grater and it really kills - not to mention how dreadfully slow and thankless a task it is), then squeeze fresh lemon juice, and measure all sorts of piddly measurements for the other ingredients - it calls for 1 and a half eggs and that is such a bitch to do!

All in all, even if it did take over an hour to prepare, the fact that it had fallen to pieces and then i had quickly followed suit, would mean that i was either a) suffering from a severe eating disorder whereby the sense of anticipation cut cruelly short by the destruction of a much longed-for treat meant that i came unhinged and should therefore be closely observed for other signs of anti-social behaviour ....OR..... b) I was projecting my anger and/or disappointment about something else onto my failed cake and was therefore only marginally disturbed and should be approached with bemusement not caution.

A few days later i found myself in Covent Garden queuing up to use the Lloyds cash machine and there were two queues to choose from and i chose what i thought to be the shorter one when in fact i got stuck in the slowest queue I've ever been in(!) behind two sets of equally annoying tourists (one an Italian mother/daughter combo who looked like they may have well been the village idiots and didn't have either a grasp of the concept of pressing buttons on a machine or indeed the fact that money should be withdrawn in ONE go not several withdrawals of £20...I lost count).

As the other queue moved briskly along I could feel my blood pressure rising and I began to get more and more annoyed, but was too stubborn to change queues, even though people would walk by, stand behind me for a few minutes then change to the other queue, take out their money and walk away, smiling at me sympathetically. Bottom line was when i FINALLY got to the front of my queue I had completely lost the plot and was muttering under my breath about how moronic the people in front of me were - using rather imaginative but horrific terminology, and I was attracting a few stares so maybe it was slightly more audible than i thought, but i didn't care. I realised i was looking like a crazy person as I withdrew my money and stomped off - but i was too far gone to put a halt to it. Clearly, again I had to conclude that I was either a lunatic or merely projecting some internal frustration onto some hapless (and terribly annoying) tourists who may have been unthoughtful but surely didn't deserve the death penalty.

I suppose it must be said that underneath my usual chilled, slightly cynical but nonetheless harmless exterior, lurks a lot of displaced passion which needs an outlet. I need to do the creative equivalent of a bungee jump. I need to throw caution to the wind and allow the pieces of my life to rain down on my head in little shreds which i can then use to paper mache together something incredible. I need to write a new song. It might well be time to move from electro to heavy metal.