BOMB DISPOSAL TRAINING

I've never really been able to figure out what to do when I'm in a gloom.

I don't mean what to do to get out of it; I mean how to behave when I'm in it, which may, I suppose be sort of the same thing - but often it isn't.

Here's what I mean: I don't want to annoy my friends or my family. They are lovely people - patient, wise and long-suffering. But when I'm down, I know that for every ounce of patience, wisdom and long-suffering...ness... that they bring, I seem to have brought along a bucket of doom. And that has to be infuriating.

Even I can spot the signs though. I think someone used this phrase in a conversation with me recently... "I can see you're in one of those moods so..." ... and an alarm bell pounded inside my head.

But the real whimpering horror of a black-dog day is that the big black dog then tells you that because of this, this dreadful 'weakness'... you can't talk to anybody, and you shouldn't even try.

And that's what I mean by not knowing what to do. It's like being strapped to a time-bomb: you need someone to be with you, and you hope that they might help you feel better, but most people run away when they realise what you're carrying. So the black dog takes you home and you tick tock in the corner, protecting everyone you love by blowing yourself up instead.

I hate that dog. And mostly because it wants me alone with a bomb.

But what it forgets, and what it wants me to forget, is that there are bomb disposal experts out there. And that its own days are numbered.

So. Here's the deal - and you can consider this bomb-disposal training if you like.

When you spot the signs and you think I might be about to go into a terminal countdown, please try two things to diffuse me.

1. Cut the wire: tell me off and be firm about it like my friend did. Be honest, don't be nice. Seriously. Tell me I'm in a mood, that I'm being a so-and-so, and I will probably get the message. Snippety snip.

2. Submerge me. I mean, if you can, change the subject, make me laugh, switch gears, interest me, change the atmosphere, ask me what the capital of Somalia is, dunk me in something new and hold me there for as long as you can. Snippety snip, gluggity glug.

Meanwhile, I also will do the same if I see it. And, what's more, I'll keep trying to fight off the black dog days too - something which God is helping me with. And what I definitely don't want to do is to sit at home listening to the tickety tock and the festering thoughts while everyone I love is petrified I might blow up if they push the wrong buttons. No! Cut the wire. Push me underwater.

And then if anyone's getting it, it's the dog.


PS. Mogadishu.