This situation happened to me some years back and then, some days later, I read this article in the newspaper. As it was before the time of this blog, I didn't keep the paper and can't attribute but it's too good not to run. Anyone know who wrote it?

At a pedestrian crossing near Victoria Station in London, a man and a woman, walking towards each other on the footpath, did that old urban dance of both dodging to the right, then to the left, in an effort to avoid one another. I was crossing the road at the same time and heard them.

Normally people laugh it off and say "sorry". Not this time.

The man, well-dressed and holding a briefcase, scowled. He tutted. And then he swore: "Oh for God's sake! Get out of the *%^&$* way!" It was not even as though he was hurrying for a train - he was walking away from the rail terminus.

Anger bubbles just below the surface in modern British life. We have become peevish, testy, edgy. You see it on the roads, at the supermarket, and, as I discovered, even on the street in the middle of a sunny morning.

People are fractious. Strangers simmer, motorists thump their steering wheels and Tube passengers groan as yet another goon steps into an already crowded carriage.Research commissioned by the BBC suggests that tempers are fraying as never before.

So what is happening? Professor Ellis Cashmore, a sociologist at Staffordshire University who helped to analyse the BBC poll, believes that computer age standards of gratification are causing much of this.

"Many aspects of life have been speeded up but others have slowed down. This is creating breaking points." For instance it has never been quicker to get information (off the web) and we can realistically expect to speak to someone on the other side of the world by telephone at the press of a few buttons.

At the same time, the public transport system is terrible, the streets are crowded and so much of society's infrastructure isn’t working. "We are seeing the maturing of a generation which is used to having things at its fingertips, so when they can't get that they become angry," says Cashmore.

A trip to the supermarket is much quicker now than years ago. It is rare to have to wait more than a couple of minutes at the till but apoplexy follows if we are not immediately served. So accustomed have we become to instant service that even the shortest delay can lead to angry grumbles.

The modern cash dispense is fast compared to the old methods of withdrawing cash. Yet if the queue for a Cashpoint is more than one or two deep, customers will curse and turn on their heels, furious at the "inconvenience".

"Frustration at having to wait is very often the cause of modern anger," says Cashmore. He spots it with his students. Few of them are nowadays prepared to go to a library, look at a card catalogue, trudge along shelves and leaf through a book. They want a reference off the internet, NOW." If it takes longer they will drum their fingers, and mutter "C'mon, c'mon!" and give up after a short time.

Is this laziness or frustration?

Gladeana McMahon of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies, says, "We are an instant access society, an 'I want' society and it's getting worse as the pressures increase. We have forgotten that life can only go at a certain pace, no faster."

A society that is impatient and angry is also a society in which indignation and contempt, ingratitude and vituperation invariably flourish. Let's be honest. It’s not a pretty sight.

Comment from Jim Mortellaro

It seems simple to me. There are too many of us. We run into one another. We are restricted from doing what we want to do.

Comment by ‘anonymous’

Anger could be due to a culture where feelings are repressed. ‘We suffer in silence but the feelings are like steam in a pot on the stove. From time to time the steam escapes but in the end, the whole pot explodes.