Temper, Temper

I found myself last night reverting to behaviour that, upon reflection this morning, takes me right back to my childhood.

We'd had a good Saturday. The honeymoon, now into extended saga status, has been requoted. We're going to give the disease carrying mozzies in the Indian Occean a miss and head out to Quebec to spend two weeks driving around the rivers, fjords and lakes. We've swapped beaches and tropical volcanos for cool, bleak landscapes and whale watching.

Second stop of the day was to the jeweller to choose our wedding bands. Frog has never worn jewellery, so seeing a ring on his finger was a totally new experience for him. He took a liking to one plain design and we agreed on the inscriptions to be engraved inside. Mine in French, his in English - a simple date so that there is no excuse of forgetting our future anniversaries.

And then it all went a little pear shaped. The argument was nothing wedding related. More an issue of a suddenly remembered piece of correspondance from the lovely French tax office that had been sat in the bottom of a bag for months and now had hefty fines attached to it.

Given our French/Anglo combination, and the imagined stereotypes, it's actually me who displays the hot headedness. I have written about these convictions before. (Although I have been assured that this streak of hot temper runs through both sides of my family.)

So, I lost my temper last night. Objects that were never designed to be projectile were suddenly launched across the table. I don't think it was just the forgotten missive but a combination of different stresses that have been rising over the last week from various sources.

And as the pieces landed and I had said what I wanted to 'say', I took myself off to the bedroom, slammed the door behind me and opened my book.

We still, politely, made it to the cinema last night. It's only this morning, as the full final apologies were made on both sides, that I realised - this is exactly what I used to do. There was always a moment when I realised that lines had been crossed, before Mum could respond and I would place my hands to cover my backside and announce, "I'm going to my room".

Do we ever grow up?