Please excuse the bad language

I was told off recently by someone I respect and by whom I am slightly intimidated. When being told off I panic; Husband compares me to the fainting goats - except I don't faint and it's my brain that freezes.


Words and sentences become blurred in my mind forming a huge blob-like mass of telling-offness leaving me quashed. It wasn't until this morning, several days later, that I remembered one bit of the reprimand and it suddenly struck me that it was complete bollocks.

It's incredibly liberating to realise that, to suddenly see that I don't need to listen to this crap. No, I do need to listen because some of it is relevant and I need to be aware of it. But this isn't gospel; it's one person's view, badly expressed.

I have now composed a riposte - less witty, more brutal - but I will never deliver it, of course. Any more than I will deliver the rude gesture that I practised (in a very delicate, ladylike and embarrassed way) in the woods.

Not this time anyway.