"A town which cannot afford loos does not need to spend £100,000 on a mayor," says a sceptic.Ah yes the loos This is no trivial side issue. Berwick's loo saga began two years ago when 20p-to-enter gates were installed in the town's public conveniences. A middle-aged woman visitor then suffered a heart attack in one of the toilets. She was trapped and the fire brigade had to cut their way in.

The woman died.The gates were removed, and the toilets have since been closed for the council cannot afford to put matters right. This week every Berwicker seemed to be complaining about the lack of public conveniences, warning it would deter tourists. On Thursday, council officials were phoning local hotels pleading with them to open their toilets to the public for a fee of £150.Edwin Sutherland-Loveday, local property owner and supporter of the mayoral option (it's rumoured he plans to stand), writes every week to the local paper criticising this and other council debacles. Others complain the gaffes are due to "politicisation" by the Lib Dems, the first party to have overall control of the council.So while some argue that a town which cannot afford loos cannot afford a new style mayor, others say that a town blessed with councillors who cannot even organise the safe spending of a penny need a people's mayor to shake them up.Thus loos, not the relative merits of rival local government models, may swing the mayoral question, and help Berwick make history again.. When one's blood boils, where does the steam go? Out through your ears, if you're Desperate Dan. When one's blood boils, where does the steam go? Out through your ears, if you're Desperate Dan.

It was Desperate Dan, wasn't it, who was drawn with little puff balls of anger issuing through the sides of his head? We also talk about people breathing fire, but that too is fanciful. In fact we're badly designed, internal combustion engines built without chimneys or exhausts. We boil and we fume until, flueless, we blow up. This is where society comes in. We boil and we fume individually, stoked by the furies of Tartarus, then society adjudicates in the matter of whatever has sent up our temperature and, abracadabra ­ in theory, anyway ­ the heat is taken out of us Retribution is always what we're really after. In the shape of the law, society persuades us to settle for justice. In the shape of religion, it persuades us to make do with forgiveness Compromises, both of them Retribution's the big one Rage, rage. And we return to it when justice fails us or we feel we can no longer forgive.

Else we self-combust.A woman sitting drinking coffee with her husband at a railway station has her bag stolen. She chases the thieves and ends up under the wheels of a car. But for the horrifying conclusion, an ordinary story of city folk A mugging, nothing more. Funny what that word mugging has done to our sense of outrage.I have always liked larceny myself ­ a thin spirited, wheedling word. And steal is good ­ cold, sneaking, stealthy, in and out like a dagger. But with mugging a degree of comic incorrigibility enters the vocabulary of theft.