Thursday 26th March

3) The worst thing I ever did was give a letter to a girl as we were leaving primary school forever. I told her not to open it until she got home. It was all about how much I didn't like her!

As this story indicates, I am not the best at confrontation. Rather than tell this girl what I thought of her at the actual moments she committed her crimes against me (which included such things as getting everyone else to play a different game in the playground when I wanted to play Dogtanian, and swearing blind that she had dropped some Jason Donovan posters off at my house for me when she hadn't), I realised there were only a few months left to go until I would never see her again and so I stored up all this information so I could use it as my ultimate revenge. That's right folks, I put it in a strongly worded letter. What a shocker.

I can't remember the exact wording of the letter and, having never seen her again since, have no idea what long-lasting effects it had on her. Maybe she suffered for the rest of her life without sustaining lasting friendships because she learnt never to trust anyone. Maybe she learnt the error of her evil ways and from then on let other people choose how to spend their breaktime, and only promised posters to people if she know she was going to deliver them. Or maybe she read it and thought 'Phht. What a loser,' and threw it in the bin.

I'll probably never know but what I do know is that she had the ultimate revenge. Because what I didn't realise at the time was that from September next year, my high school bus route would take me past her beautiful white gabled house every single day. That's right folks, every day during term time. Each time I saw it, I would get a nasty feeling in the bottom of my stomach and think about what I had done. For seven years. She may have only lived there for another year or so and then moved to another country for all I know, because I never saw her there outside the house. (Of course, equally she could have been sat inside it the whole time, in her darkened bedroom scared to go out inside humanity turned on her again, drinking bottles of White Lightening to forget the pain.) But I do wish I hadn't done it. Or at least done it to her face so I could have seen her reaction. Then I could have looked at that white gabled house every day without a trace of guilt.

Then again, my face-to-face confrontations with people don't generally go well either. When I was at university, the only way to get there from home was to catch a bus that went once every two hours to and from town. It was the 182, the only bus ever to drive through the forgotten village of Woodplumpton, and you couldn't miss it because there wasn't another one that even came close. So I was waiting one cold wintery night at five past five for the comforting lights of the 182 when a bus approached, labelled as the 180. I panicked for a moment, knowing that I was there at the right time, but that this was the wrong number, which ended up at the same destination but went via a different route, and so rather than getting it wrong, I failed to stick my arm out and the bus went past without me. I ran to the timetable on the side of the shelter and looked at all the numbers and times and realise that I had been right - the 180 shouldn't have come for another hour and I had indeed missed the wrongly labelled bus. A few phonecalls and lots of waiting later, and my dad had to come out and pick me up and take me home.

The next night, as I was waiting at 5.05, the same thing happened - the bus came but it was labelled 180. I stuck my hand out, got onto the bus and asked the driver if it did go through Woodplumpton.

'Yes,' was his miserable response.

'Oh, the number's wrong on the front then,' I said helpfully. 'It should say the 182. The 180 goes a different way.'

He turned to me with evil dripping from his eyes (as I remember it later in my nightmares) and growled, 'Thankyou for telling my how to do my job, now go and SIT DOWN!'

I was so shocked that I ran to the back of the bus and meekly plonked myself on a seat, and had to wipe tears away from my eyes all the way home.

Why I couldn't have looked him back in the eye and said 'Actually I missed the bus last night because it had the wrong number on, you miserable beggar', I don't know. Or why it mattered to me that some guy I didn't know was having a bad day and took it out on me. I think when you've spent your whole life trying to please people and always try and say and do the right things at the right times, you take it pretty hard when someone doesn't like you.

(I have to say I'm not as bad as that now. I only mull things over for maybe a few weeks afterwards now, rather than years.)

So, how wierd is it that when you become a parent, confrontation is what you have to do every single day, almost constantly? Telling people what to do, challenging unacceptable behaviour, pointing out the negative as well as rewarding the positive? It's no wonder parents lose sense of themselves. In just a few years I went from a girl who never argued with anyone (except my brothers, but they don't count, they're just brothers) to this woman who feels like she shouts all day. It's no wonder having toddlers is an exhausting time.

I think if I'd have encountered that bus driver now, and I'd had a pretty bad day myself, he'd have been in for a bit of a shock, and I'm not talking about a strongly worded letter this time, either. I may just have got him out of his seat and onto the bus steps to sit for forty-seven minutes (I'm guestimating) until he was ready to apologise. And he wouldn't have got any pudding either.