The Last Straw

Sitting in a cafe recently, I found myself wondering why it is that so many people smoke cigarettes - to relax - while at the same time drinking coffee, which is a notorious stimulant.

Then the smoke cleared briefly, and I had a blinding insight that could make me a millionaire: modern people need stress in their lives, every bit as much as they need relaxation. So, as a taster, here are just a few of the self-help tips from my forthcoming international best-seller The Little Book of Worry (c. Quickbuck Enterprises, 1999).

Explore the parameters of your fuelguage: While driving in the city, resist the urge to top up your tank. I don't know about you, but my car runs for another 50 miles or so when the needle falls below "empty". And after about 47 of these, there's always a special moment when you're stopped at a traffic light with a three-mile tailback behind you, and the thought suddenly occurs that maybe the petrol is going to run out right now. This is an excellent way to achieve stress.

Browse in some bookshops: Without thinking, walk into a bookshop carrying a brand new book you bought somewhere else. Then remember you're carrying the book, and now try walking out of the shop, past the security people, without feeling self-conscious. You'll be working so hard to appear relaxed, it'll look like you have a full set of encyclopaedias down each trouser leg.

Listen to the soundtrack: Next time you go to the movies, try to forget what's happening on the screen for a moment and listen instead to all the people around you eating popcorn, and crisps, and apples, and noisy chocolate-coated ice-cream. Pretty soon you won't be able to concentrate on the film, with all that damned munching going on. Listen harder, and you can hear the guy behind you sucking sweets! Now you're grinding your teeth, and you're going to have a headache as well as missing the movie.

Think about the global economic situation: The markets are nervous - why shouldn't you be?

Think about Boris Yeltsin: You can become extremely worried by simply taking five minutes out of your busy day and thinking about Boris Yeltsin. (Thinking about Bill Clinton works equally well for some people.)

Choose the middle way: Guys: when using a three-urinal public toilet why not, just for a change, choose the middle one. You'd be amazed at how often two drunken friends will come in immediately afterwards and you'll find yourself in the middle of a boozy conversation. You'll be so stressed you won't be able to go.

Buy some bread: Go to your local Spar shop and buy a "Buttercrust Cracked Wheat" loaf, as I did just last night. On the till's electronic read-out, this will be abbreviated as "Butt. crack." and the person behind you in the queue will notice and start giggling. This is not a major cause of stress (unless you see it as another example of the coarsening of everyday life), but it's valuable in its simplicity.

Enjoy a game of cricket: When India and Pakistan met for the first in a series of cricket tests earlier this year, tension between supporters was so high that there were 6,000 police officers in a stadium with a 30,000 capacity. Now both states are engaging in tit-for-tat missile tests. Notice how they use the very same word - tests - for playing cricket and launching nuclear missiles? Meditate on this for a few minutes each day, for guaranteed stress induction.

Bring your own: When dining out, especially in the quiet, posh kind of restaurant, why not bring your baby along? Before the first course is served, you'll have the stress levels of a dealer on the New York Stock Exchange. And the amazing thing is, it works for other diners too!

Think weighty thoughts: Stand in front of the mirror every morning and say to yourself: every day, in every way, I am getting fatter and fatter and fatter.

Speaking of causes of stress, the ants are back. Yes, exactly a year since the last invasion, a huge force of ants has been massing this week on the border between the garden and the house, as the end of their winter hibernation sparks the annual trek indoors.

We don't know when they're going to start marching but my guess is, if they're worker ants, they're waiting for May 1st. Meanwhile, advance units have been turning up all over the house. I started out the week repatriating them to the garden, but pretty soon I was just hitting them with a shoe. Compassion is too scarce in the world to waste it on insects, even ones with a high degree of social organisation. (And if any of them were soldier ants, I reckon they knew the risks before they joined.)

It's a futile effort, I know. No species is better at invading a house than the ant, with the possible exception of our neighbour's overweight cat, which crashed through a weak spot in our patio roof last July. So it's time to find that book on natural insect repellents again - if the ants haven't taken it away - and settle in for another long campaign.

It's worth stressing (and in any case my wife is writing this paragraph, so I have no choice) that having ants in your house is not a sign of uncleanliness. Quite the contrary, in fact. Scientists say that the traditionally outdoor ant has simply developed a taste for the modern home; warm, well-insulated and meticulously well kept as it is (no thanks to him). Indeed it might be worth remembering that Maeve Binchy wrote about the very same problem in this supplement last year; and if ants can get into a world-famous novelist's home, they can get in anywhere.

In the meantime, it's important that we don't confuse the scientific names for the red ant (myrmica rubra) with the black garden ant (Lasius Niger). As I discovered when going through the Irish Times insect file - there really is such a thing - we did this in a caption to a news report last year, and it annoyed John Devlin from Dublin 2 no end.

Having said that, when you hit either species with a shoe, they look pretty much the same. "Antimatter" is the scientific name for it.