Royal Roid Rage

It’s raining the way British rain does when it’s not trying to impress anyone — not dramatic, not cinematic, just a committed, personal damp that seeps into the seams of your clothing and quietly rearranges your mood from the inside out. It drips off noses. It creeps down your spine in icy trickles. It settles into your socks and stays there like a grudge. We’re on training duty today — me, Charlotte, Kev, and Angry Man. Yet another lamb to the slaughter, and naturally, it’s our turn to show him the ropes. Angry Man looks like someone’s inflated a gym membership and forgotten to install the empathy package. Bulging shoulders, beefed-up muscles, and veins like raised road maps. His neck appears to have eaten his own head. His jacket strains heroically against his biceps, the seams praying quietly under the strain, one sneeze from ruin. If he isn’t on steroids, his temperament certainly is. Roid-rage in soggy shorts. A walking thundercloud in a Royal Mail jacket. He doesn’t so much as speak as violently eject swear words into the atmosphere. “Fuck this weather.” “Shit on a bastard stick.” “Absolute bollocks of a piss-arse round.” “Who designed this fucking trolley, Stevie fucking Wonder?” We are barely thirty seconds in when the fold-up trolley refuses to unfold and mutates into an aggressive metal spider. He yanks one leg out. Another snaps back and traps his finger. “YOU FUCKING CUNT—” He hops in a furious circle, sucking his finger, eyes watering with incandescent betrayal. “Stupid fucking wanker trolley. Absolute metal arsewipe. I’ll bend you into a fucking pretzel and shove you up whoever gave birth to your designer.” Charlotte instinctively drifts half a step behind Kev, using him as human armour, a damsel behind steel-plated shoulders. Kev, who has done thirty-five years in the job and now exists in a state of gentle spiritual detachment, calmly sips his tea. “Sometimes the latch sticks,” he offers gently. Angry Man slowly rotates his head. “I KNOW HOW A FUCKING LATCH WORKS, YOU CHEERFUL CUMWIPE.” He does not. He boots the trolley with theatrical hatred. The trolley collapses inwards in a final act of spite. Charlotte pretends to find something fascinating in a hedge. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I briefly see God — arms folded, shaking his head. Eventually the trolley submits, slightly bent, spiritually broken. We set off. The rain has transformed the post into a biodegradable nightmare. Envelopes sag in our hands like damp pancakes. Paper fibres swell and loosen. Ink runs in slow blue veins, bleeding its secrets into the margins. The letters go slick and slimy, the surface dissolving into soft pulp that coats our fingers like paper-mache paste and soggy breadcrumbs. Angry Man lifts an envelope between two enormous fingers. It immediately begins to fall apart. “What the fuck is this?” he mutters, peeling soggy paper off his thumb. “Why’s it fucking slimy? It feels like a slug’s wanked on it.” He attempts to shove it through the letterbox. The envelope buckles, folds in on itself, and begins to melt like slushy snow. “Oh you have got to be FUCKING SHITTING ME.” He pushes harder. The letterbox snaps shut on his fingers. “BOLLOCKS. SHIT. FUCK. ARSE. TIT.” He shakes his hand violently, spraying rainwater and paper pulp into the air like an enraged sprinkler. Charlotte cautiously offers, “Sometimes if you just angle it slightly—“ He spins towards her. “IT’S A FUCKING SLOT, NOT A FUCKING RUBIK’S CUBE, YOU PRICK.” He rams what remains of the letter again. It crumbles completely, half sliding into the house like a sodden ghost of itself, the other half suctioning itself to his palm, refusing to let go. He stares at his hand in disbelief. “I’VE GOT LETTER ON ME.” An elderly woman appears at exactly the wrong moment, towing a shopping trolley and the quiet authority of someone who survived rationing. She stops. Observes. Narrows her eyes. Then: a long, slow, nuclear tut. Angry Man freezes. “Did you just fucking tut me?” She tuts again, louder this time, and marches on. His face drains of colour, then floods crimson. The veins in his forehead bulge with blue rage. “WHO THE FUCK TUTS A STRANGER? YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE, YOU JUDGMENTAL OLD PRUNE. GO AND TUT YOUR OWN FACE.” Charlotte coughs violently into her sleeve. Kev studies the clouds like a serene monk. At the next house there’s a small gate. Angry Man grabs the latch and rattles it so violently he almost rips it off its hinges. “OPEN, YOU BASTARD LITTLE SHIT GATE.” Nothing happens. He yanks harder. The gate rattles smugly, enjoying itself immensely. “YOU FUCKING KNOBJOCKEY,” he screams at the gate — then, in a surge of profoundly misplaced dominance, headbutts it. BONK. “JESUS-TITTY-FUCKING-CHRIST.” he curses, nursing his skull like a wounded gladiator. Charlotte wanders over and casually lifts the latch with one finger. The gate swings open with a whimsical creak. We all watch his soul fracture in real time, tiny emotional shards glittering invisibly in the rain. His eye twitches. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Funny. Real fucking funny.” At the next house, no one answers, so he has to write out a red card. This becomes a three-act-tragedy. The pen refuses to work. He scribbles. Nothing. He shakes it violently. Curses its existence, threatens its bloodline, questions its upbringing. Ink explodes onto his fingers. “YOU FUCKING PIECE OF USELESS SHIT.” He tries writing against the wall. The wall is soaked. Ink streams downward like heartbroken mascara. He tries using his thigh. His shorts absorb the ink and bloom into abstract art. The card softens, buckles, tears. Charlotte, Kev and I turn away in synchronised convulsions, shoulders jerking, silent wheezing laughter trapped in our throats like suppressed coughs at a funeral. “What the FUCK are you laughing at?” he snarls. “Rain,” Kev says serenely. A dog launches itself from a garden and bites Angry Man’s leg. All hell breaks loose. “YOU LITTLE FUCKING RAT BASTARD.” He chases it down the road, shouting increasingly creative obscenities. He returns breathless, trousers torn, ego in shreds. Before he can fully recover, a pigeon swoops overhead and deposits a warm, milky splatter directly onto the crown of his head. There is a brief, sacred silence. He reaches up slowly, touches the wetness, brings his fingers into view. “IS THAT… IS THAT BIRD SHIT?” he whispers, voice cracking with spiritual devastation. The pigeon lands on a nearby lamppost and stares at him with absolute indifference. “YOU FLYING CUNT,” he roars. “I’LL END YOU.” He throws a soggy leaflet at the pigeon. It flutters uselessly to the ground. The pigeon remains unmoved. Charlotte has turned completely away, shoulders convulsing. Kev closes his eyes and drifts into his usual state of serene fuck-all. At house twelve, he finally snaps and dumps a whole bag of letters into a wheelie bin. “Erm…” I say cautiously, “you’re not supposed to do that.” He slowly turns his head towards me. A death stare. “but go ahead,” I add brightly. Lunch arrives like divine intervention. We shelter beside the van while the rain continues its campaign against morale. Charlotte produces — seemingly from nowhere — a massive tub of ice cream. I’m fairly sure she’s been towing a small freezer behind her. Miss Organised, always prepared for emotional emergencies. We dig in with plastic spoons. Kev watches us thoughtfully. “I’ve got to watch my figure.” he says, rubbing his bulging stomach. “Of course you do.” Charlotte laughs. He pauses. “Well… one spoonful won’t hurt.” One spoonful becomes four. Four becomes half the tub. He eats with the urgency of a man robbing his own fridge at midnight, eyes darting like a guilty fox. Meanwhile, Angry Man stands a few metres away, arms folded, rain dripping from his face in angry streams. He’s vibrating fury. Watching us eat dairy as if it personally sabotages his lean meal plan. The spoon snaps in his hands. “FUCK THIS!” he roars, launching the fold-up trolley at the van. BANG. We all jump. Charlotte clutches her ice cream protectively. Kev doesn’t even blink. “That will leave a mark.” Angry man storms off, kicking a puddle so aggressively, it soaks him from head to toe in the process. This angers him even more, which feels stupidly impressive at this point. We sit in stunned silence, rain dripping off our hoods, ice cream melting slightly around the edges. “Do you ever think,” Charlotte says quietly, “that some people just don't know how to soften?” I watch the ice cream sag, collapsing into itself — sweet, fragile, fleeting. Angry Man is all muscle and fury. Built like armour. But the smallest resistance — a stubborn trolley, a soggy envelope, a puddle, a pigeon with poor bladder control — unravels him completely. Ice cream, on the other hand, knows it’s temporary. It knows it will gently disappear. It doesn’t fight the weather. It just becomes… something else. Kev licks the spoon thoughtfully. “Life’s easier if you let yourself melt a bit.” Some people spend their whole lives trying not to melt — terrified of becoming soft, terrified of losing form — and end up breaking themselves on doors that were never locked in the first place. I’d rather be ice cream. Even if it doesn’t last.