Hilary Fannin: Some strangers need a good slap with a mackerel

There’s been an unexpected development: I’ve been asked to represent Ireland at this summer’s Olympic Games. I’ll be doing the long jump from Toe Head all the way to Tokyo, as that’s the only way I can be assured of getting there.

Beyond that, my events include javelin throwing at people who are really starting to irritate me, and extreme leaps of the imagination due to a stalled and atrophying life.

I don’t know about you, but I’m hitting moments when my animus towards unknown strangers is becoming worryingly dangerous. There’s a certain breed of men, usually agitated fortysomethings, who stand too close to other people at coffee counters, rattling the keys of their sleek cars impatiently while someone faffs around looking for their loyalty card.

They are loud, unselfconscious men, barking down the phone through their masks about liquidity and absorption and adjusting periodicals – money, in other words

They are loud, unselfconscious men, barking down the phone through their masks about liquidity and absorption and adjusting periodicals, which all sounds interestingly uterine until you realise that they’re talking about money – making it, losing it and shoving it into the pockets of their slimfit chinos.

Hilary Fannin: The veganism has gone up the spout. I lost the will to pulse a mushroom

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s Christmas gift collection is out. It doesn’t disappoint

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I thought about the 1,013 new cases and the 94 further deaths

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Is it any wonder I never ran naked along the Seine?

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On my way to the fish shop the other day, I noticed a tall man and his small daughter, hand in hand, striding and skipping towards me down the pier. Earwigging on their conversation as they approached, I heard the man say: “I’ll be straight with you. Mummy is a damn difficult woman to live with.”

The child, who was dressed like a Disney princess, a floaty white costume pulled on over trousers, sweater and wellington boots, looked up at him.

“Damn difficult,” the man spat, his mouth a thin tideline of angry determination.

The little girl said nothing, just looked down at the ground and hesitated before she picked up the rhythm of her skipping.

Maybe she saw magical things underneath her flowery wellies, sprites and pixies playing among the snaking remnants of nylon ropes and fragments of nets littering the pier. Maybe she saw tiny imps living happily ever after in the empty fish boxes.

I wanted to follow the man to the end of the pier, slap him around with a mackerel and tell him to keep his opinions to himself. But what do I know? The world is full of miniature cruelties, and people everywhere are crumbling under the relentlessness of it all. And no, I don’t need to be reminded that the real dangers for stressed-out families lie behind closed doors.

Examining my desire to assault a complete stranger with a pelagic fish led me to read up about sudden flashes of Covid anger. Here, then, is a heavily edited round-up of what the experts say:

• 1. Recognise anger, identify its presence in your body. (You can often find it hovering over the solar plexus like a light aircraft looking for a landing strip.)
• 2. Accept that the anger is there. (Like your spleen, anger has some important functions and you'd miss it if it was gone.)
• 3. It's okay to be angry. (This pithy little piece of advice I found hardest to swallow. If you were a convent school girl circa 1969, you will know that anger is unseemly, unbecoming, unladylike and, worse, it makes the Virgin Mary cry real tears!)
• 4. Investigate the sensations within your body. What does it feel like to be angry? (It feels nice. The thought of wrapping a fillet of hake around the over-sharing man's tonsils was dead satisfying.)
• 5. Nurture the anger. (Well, sure, okay, if you say so.)
• 6. It's important to be kind to yourself when you're angry. (This was a bit of a head-wreck – feeling simultaneously kind and angry is like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head.)
• 7. Don't be self-critical or shame yourself for being angry. (Eh? Really? I refer you straight back to the weeping Virgin in point three.)
• 8. Be compassionate towards your anger; it's reminding you of your boundaries. (I wish I'd understood this as a younger woman, when I'd smile my head off and look for the exit rather than knee some fool in the groin.)

I left the fish shop and wandered down to the end of the pier, incognito under my hood. The man was sitting on a bench looking out to sea, the little girl playing around on the steps of a telescope. He appeared weary.

“Can we get chips now?” his daughter asked.

“Maybe,” he answered, standing again and taking her hand. “Sure.”

• 9. Be considerate and the anger will pass naturally, like a wave on the sea. (Phew. Back to the Olympic preparations then. Now, where did I put my discus?)