Killing in the name

As lockdown has limited our opportunities to socialise more widely, we as a family have found out quite a lot about each other.

The vast majority of this has been extremely positive.

I have discovered (as I always suspected) that my husband is hugely respected and relied upon at work. I've stood listening to his Teams conversations is awe of his patience and knowledge.

I have confirmed that my daughter has a remarkably long fuse and is thoughtful, creative and pretty resilient.

What she has found out about me cannot be described as flattering, but does, nonetheless, amuse her hugely. And that is that "mummy likes angry music."

She's got a point. She's realised this on a couple of musical roadtrips. As we're not using our cars anywhere near as much as usual, we have taken her on a few pootles to nowhere in particular just to keep the engines ticking over.

There's usually a stack of CDs in our cars (yes, we are that hi-tech). Husband's tend to be pop, disco and generally quite calming. Mine are on the indie, punk, rock side of things.

Or, as my daughter would categorise, angry and shouty.

To be fair, she's got a point. There's quite a bit of hollering in my collection and some rather choice lyrics (although please note I have not played her this week's song).

Not sure why this is. Perhaps I have a huge reservoir of untapped rage that I only feel safe to express through someone else's musical explosions. It might all be simmering away in my subconscious.

Come to think of it, I do have recurring dreams in which I'm an assassin. These are great by the way, a particularly vivid one seeing me chase down Idi Amin with a machine gun in our local leisure centre.

Then there was the one where I was a samurai on horseback, slicing my way through an oncoming horde.
Maybe I need a touch more warm milk before bed.

But I view these car-based outbursts of musical anger as a healthy way to express my feelings, without causing actual physical damage to the nearest window/crockery/despot.

Aaaah, lockdown life, things you never knew you never knew. And maybe didn't want to ever discover.

:: Killing in the name by Rage against the machine