Wendyl Nissen: Driven to my happy place

Beware the rages of a hormonal woman. Photo / Thinkstock

Are you having a tantrum?" asked my son. He had walked into the kitchen and heard me talking to my husband using phrases like "honestly, it's beyond the pale" and "how could he?", but with half a dozen swear words inserted between each syllable.

I paused momentarily to look at him.

"Yes, I might be."

"Been a while," he said as he and my husband exchanged a glance. Men do that. They have looks they throw at each other across the heads of women who are having tantrums.

I wish I knew what they meant, but to interpret I would need to change a vital chromosome, and I'm just not prepared to do that.

Or I could simply reason that being men there was nothing more complicated in that look than a simple dilating of the pupils which conveyed the message that both of them were quite scared.

Only women can actually say full sentences with a look.

"I need to make a phone call," I said to my husband before striding off to the other end of the house in the least tantrum-like manner I could muster. There I made not one but several phone calls where the phrases "honestly, it's beyond the pale" and "how could he?" were used again with half a dozen swear words inserted between each syllable.

The matter at stake was a small oversight by one of my employers but one which had the ability to penetrate my competitive spirit.

On a normal day I might have noticed it but said nothing.

But I let rip. I eventually received a heartfelt apology and felt a little better, but not much.By the end of the day I was exhausted.

I had tried to cook a spotted dick but the red tea towel in which I had wrapped the suet and currant pudding and boiled it in for two hours gave up its dye.

My spotted dick resembled an afterbirth.

Then my accountant made the mistake of contacting us to gently remind us to pay some tax.

"What on earth did you say to him?" asked my husband, who had picked up the phone when our accountant rang back. "He sounds scared."

My daughter came home from school and found me lying on the bed gazing out of the window.

"Cup of tea?" was all she said.

I heard her talking to her father and brother in the kitchen. I thought I heard the words "pre" and "menstrual" used, but I can't be sure, because I've never been in the same room when a man has talked out loud about female hormonal fluctuations. Just the mere mention makes them blush and stare at their feet.

My friend rang and got the full force of my day in quite unnecessary detail. "What are you doing?" I demanded to know as I heard a chopping sound - which could possibly mean my friend was not giving me the benefit of her undivided attention.

"I'm making dinner, but when you rang I was naked lying on a massage table.

"For the duration of this call I have dressed myself, paid the masseuse, made another appointment, thanked her profusely, driven home, let myself into my house, taken things out of the fridge and begun to cook," she said patiently.

"And by the way, it's your time of the month."

She has a habit of pointing this out because I'm sure she keeps a calendar where she has marked in red letters "Do not answer the phone if Wendyl rings today!" on a certain date every month.

There was nothing for it but to drive to the caravan and leave my husband at home alone.

He was on a deadline writing a book about a man famous for symptoms closely resembling that of an ageing pre-menstrual woman and the last thing he needed was the hormonal mess I had become. Actually, no one deserved it. I needed to protect the world from me.

Once there I made old-fashioned salad dressing out of condensed milk to see what it tasted like, washed my hair with baking soda to see if it worked and was delighted to find a jar of cherry brandy I had made and stored in the wardrobe to mature.

All perfectly normal, experimental behaviour for caravan time alone.

And then I made the mistake of opening my email account.

I immediately rang my husband in Auckland. "Honestly, it's beyond the pale!" I said.

"Tell me about it," he said as he walked through the caravan door.