The chatty commuter and the smouldering volcano

I nearly erupted last night. I was already pretty exhausted from the 3:15 am trigger shot - although it was undoubtedly better than the 4:45 am timing I had last time, it still meant I woke up every half hour for most of the night, anxious that I would sleep through the vital time. And by the time I'd turned the light on and stuck a needle in my stomach, I was awake enough to have a pretty good Insomnia Hour after doing the shot. So I really hated my alarm going off at 6:15 to tell me it was time to get up for work.

Then there are the horror-moans. The fact that I know it's all hormonal doesn't make the pressure cooker that builds up inside me any less intense. I wasn't sure yesterday evening whether I was going to yell at someone or burst into tears, but the latter actually felt a lot closer.

So it wasn't a good time for the trains to be screwed up, and for Mr Chatty-Chatty to spot me and make a beeline for me as I was changing trains on the way home in the evening. Mr Chatty-Chatty is someone who usually commutes on the same train as us in the morning, but he finishes work earlier than us, so we don't often see him in the evening. He likes to Talk, and he loves a captive audience. In one way, it's fine - you don't need to do much more than smile and nod every so often as he sustains his monologue for the full hour it takes to complete the journey.

In the morning, I can take it. Although it's early and I don't feel very sociable, I've come to accept him as a feature of the 7:16 into London.

But in the evening, after a hard day at work, I don't even want DH to talk to me. I just want to retreat into my little world, read the Evening Standard and quietly process my thoughts. That way, by the time I get home I'm ready to cook the supper and ask DH about his day.

Last night I didn't have DH there to act as my foil, and I didn't manage to hide in time. Mr Chatty-Chatty started talking at me as we stood on the station waiting for our train, and then he sat down opposite me and carried on talking, even though I said pointedly at least three times that I was hoping to finish reading my Evening Standard before I got home. It was open on my lap in front of me, but he wouldn't take the hint.

We had to change trains again, and again he followed me, sat down opposite me and kept me from my paper.

By the time I got off the train, I was a mini-Vesuvius, just waiting to erupt. My quiet time had been ruined, and I was in no mood to do anything remotely civilised.

As I reached my front door, my mobile began to ring. I took it out of my pocket, opened it up... and the person hung up as I answered it. Then I heard the phone inside the house begin to ring, and fumbled to put the mobile back in my pocket, get out my key and get it into the lock. The house phone stopped ringing just as I got to it, and the person didn't leave a message.

DH took one look at my face and hurried off to get me my drink of choice - a mug of hot milk. When he brought the mug through, with milk all over its outside, I knew that he had set the microwave for too long a time and let it boil over. I asked him to wipe the outside of the mug so that I wouldn't get milk everywhere. He took it into the kitchen, then returned with the very bottom of the mug wiped, but milk still all round the outside. I pointed out that the mug was still covered in milk, and he took it back into the kitchen - and brought it back with one side wiped and the other side still covered in milk.

The reduction in my stress levels over the last three weeks is amply demonstrated by the fact that DH didn't end up wearing a light coating of warm milk for the rest of the evening. I managed to hold myself together, but the volcano continued to bubble away and I remained out of sorts all evening.

I think someone might have left the front door open, because when I announced at about 9:00 that I was going to have an early night, a huge gust of wind swept through the house.

Or maybe it was just poor DH's sigh of relief.