Launch time

The philosophy of launching – what do you throw?

Launching stuff isn't universal. There are any number of alternative means of anger management. There is (the absolutely ridiculous and impractical) taking deep breaths and controlling yourself. The downside of this is the lack of consistency in successful application. Sooner or later, everyone pops. Then it is time for the regrets, regretting the want of taking on board Spike Milligan's instant dislike advice – and saving all that time.

There's the cat and dog kickers of the world. Let's face it, the mere fact that they exist is enough, in itself to catalyse a launching episode. There's wastepaper bin kickers. I've only worked with two, and they were both passive aggressive bullies, one absolutely odious, with a character resembling a retarded child, the other one of the most boring individuals I've ever met. Locked in a room with Michael Owen, the bore-waves would cause a self-induced sanity protecting coma in everyone within a three mile radius. I don't really like the inanimate object kickers (although they're infinitely preferable to the animal kickers).

There's the shouters. I find the shouters an irritant, again, themselves able to nudge things towards a launch. Two problems with them. Typically they're too prone to shouting. It is, after all, an easy alternative, all too simple to slip into. Cheap and nasty. Also, they're typically on the small side, and unlikely to win a shouting war with someone less likely to shout in the first place, yet they are unwilling to accept some intercontinental ballistic level shouting as an indication that they've ventured into the baritone zone where they're hopelessly out vocal chorded. There's those words of advice. Speak quietly. Carry a big stick.

I'm a launcher, and, here's how I arrived at the latest launch:

Into the car, Monday morning, bag full of weekend work to be typed up. This isn't going to get me ahead, or catch me up. But it might just help a bit. Office, email, staff off sick. Reach for the phone - and it falls away, hits the floor, and the back drops off, the batteries roll out and land up in a difficult to get at corner. I put the handset together, as the mobile rings, the phone batteries are fussy about which way up they go into the handset, and, overall, it's a moaning mobile call. The landline handset then starts some long winded re-logging on process. Happy Monday, thank you, then the printer has one of its tantrums and that's it...next thought...what to throw:

• most valuable: good for the materialistic, and those holding stuff worth loads of money

• biggest: always the grandest gesture, not always the most satisfaction

• heaviest (this is me – I'm declaring a personal bias):

If it's going, it might as well give a satisfying thud, on hitting the window / wall / on landing, and it might as well take some power in the launching in the first place.

So, on losing it, I want maximum noise, clouds of dust, and some physical effort.

The eventual financial cost, the overblown gesture, they don't count. I want physical effort and impact. I settled for slamming a pile of files down onto the desk. Not through any self control or quality anger management on my part, but just because there wasn't a brick readily to hand. To launch at the printer.