My neighbour stripped every apple from my late husband’s trees the day we buried him. By morning I’d laid something across her front lawn — and she screamed so loudly the whole street came out.

It is not the thing.

The thing is that I had a warning — a real one, the kind that matters — and I held onto it for four hours so that I could deliver it in the most painful way I could think of.

I was not wrong to be angry. I am still angry.

But anger that has a warning in it has one job, and the job is to get the warning to the people who need it, as fast as possible.

Everything else is for afterwards.

If you ever find yourself holding something that could hurt somebody who does not know it yet — and you notice yourself taking time to make it land properly —

stop. Go and knock.

Deliver it in your dressing gown, badly, with no display.

May you like

You can make it land later, if you still want to.

The apple in the lunchbox will not wait for you to get it right.