STEAM ENGINE

How do you deal with frustration?

I bottle mine up and let it bubble away on the inside like a steadily boiling kettle. Sometimes I find a person to vent to, and sometimes they understand that I'm just expelling hot air. I've chosen badly in the past though and accidentally persuaded a whole load of people that I'm an emotional hot-head.

My friend Paul is a master at calmness in the middle of frustration. I've known him for seventeen years and he's never once shown any sign of the explosive rage I get. Maybe he's just better at hiding it.

The trouble is that people like that can make people like me feel, a bit, well, inferior - as though that is the way to be and there's a valve missing in us if we're not quite as cool. I certainly feel as though I should have this under control by now.

Well. In 1781, a Scottish inventor called James Watt took an existing idea and figured out how to use steam to power a rotary engine. A whole world of possibility opened up to the eyes of the Eighteenth Century; a world which would lead directly to the Industrial Revolution, mechanically powered machines and eventually the railway and the steam engine.

I'm mentioning it because effectively, a steam engine is a device that manages venting under control. And that's exactly what I feel like I need: heat and pressure, channelled into power to get things moving, ready to change the world.

So I'm on a bit of a quest. Can I learn how to channel my emotions, to engineer my frustration into a positive, forward-thinking steam-engine that somehow makes a difference?

Watt had the SI unit of power named after him. That's where we get kilowatts from - power, from controlled and cleverly engineered pressure and frustration.

I'll get there, but in the meantime, if you see me with steam coming out of my ears, go easy on me won't you?