My teenage strop was an embarrassing anticlimax

Tracking Back: In the latest in his series of reflections about place and pathway, Will Gore flounces out with purpose

‘The self-pity was turning into a feeling that I was on a mission’ (iStock)

Anger manifests itself in a remarkable variety of ways. Some people rant and rave, others go for silent, steely-eyed rage.

And then there is the storming off option. We’ve probably all done it at one time or another, slamming doors on the back of a verbal explosion, or simply flouncing away with nose in the air.

The stomp doesn’t always go to plan. Many is the tale of an angry person crashing a door behind them, only to realise they have walked into a cupboard; or heading stridently for an exit they can’t open because they’ve left their office security card on their desk. If you’re going to storm off, preparation is vital.

When I was 16 I went to a sixth form college in Cambridge, the secondary school in my home village only going to GCSE level. The college was only 11 miles away, but the bus could take an age during rush hour. The dream was to have a free period first thing, allowing a lie in and a quicker journey.

Likewise, on days when the timetable left you without a class to attend in the afternoon, it was possible to head home early. It was on such a day that I found myself stomping.

At 23 years’ distance, I do not recall what had caused the strop: it was quite probably more a self-pitying sort of angst than real anger. I have an inkling it was an affair of the heart, but the specifics are as cloudy now as they were insignificant then.

In any event, I was in a dark mood as I flounced – almost certainly unnoticed – out of the school gates, heading for the bus stop. But my storming exit was stymied when I discovered the bus had been cancelled. With an hour to wait until the next one, the drama was at risk of being cut short.

Fine, I thought, the bus’s non-appearance adding grist to my melancholic mill; I’ll walk.

I strode on purposefully, a sense of high dudgeon fuelling my departure from the city. By the time the next bus came along, I reckoned I’d be well clear of the southern suburbs.

As the yards went by, however, I started to wonder if I wanted to get a bus at all. The self-pity was turning into a feeling that I was on a mission; that walking all the way home would somehow prove something – to whom, I wasn’t sure, but that didn’t dilute my initial determination.

And so on I went, ignoring the bus stops that appeared with decreasing frequency. I began the long climb up Wandlebury Hill, suddenly aware that nobody actually knew where I was – and, in the days before mobile phones, there was no obvious way of changing that.

Just as I was, perhaps, coming to my teenage senses, a car pulled into a lay-by ahead of me. The passenger window was wound down to reveal my friend Tom: “Alright mate? What are you doing out here?”

It was, in the cold light of day, a reasonable question. The next – “Do you want a lift?” – had only one sensible answer. I’d stropped off earlier; now I hopped in.

All storms must pass.