If I value one quality above all others, let it be the quality of calm.

A well-drilled mother and teacher, when a child runs past me I urge them to walk. When a child shouts, I counsel an appropriate tone of voice. And when someone is having the screaming heebie jeebies on the floor at my feet, I tell them: it’s time to be calm.

Unfortunately it seems to be a quality I find elusive.

And it is not for want of trying. My life has been filled with the trappings of, well, a Trappist monk.

I used to drift off to sleep to recordings of the sea. I learnt to visualize with Shakti Gawain. I took on yoga, and steadfastly saluted the sun twice a day.

And I paid a small king’s ransom to learn Transcendental Meditation, the way it should be done.

I worked very hard at all these calming tecniques. But you see, that was just the problem. I worked hard.

You might say, I was driven to find calm, rather like a phoenix seeking comfort in a Swedish ice-bath.

I had a toolbox to work with. I can think positively, deep breathe, ask myself just how bad a situation really is.

I can float down through my own consciousness , becoming distant from the hustle and bustle of daily life.

And while all these things have helped me immeasurably, whether they have made me calmer remains to be seen.

This morning I happened to glance to the back of the voluminous bus we call Transport in our family.

The children had just vacated the very back end of the bus to go to school.

It is their delight to spurn the middle seats, these days. Instead, they flock to the opposite end of the battered people carrier, so that any furtive dancing to pop songs goes undetected by anyone over 10 years of age.

And there, strapped in with seatbelts, the following incumbents sat waiting for their owners return: Bumpy the elephant, Lulu the owl, Harriet the sophisticated French hare, and Clucky the chicken.

There they sat, all day, their owners calm in the knowledge they would be there when the busy day was over.

I permitted myself an indulgent moment. The team were strapped in the back and all was well with the world.

Now to negotiate the way to work.

I was faced with two routes: the calm, uplifting road through the forests and fields; or the cut-throat route, the one which dices with one of our great motorways, which negotiates roadworks and forces even the meekest skoda driver to battle with BMW drivers for lane space and self respect.

My battle armour strikes fear into any luxury car owner. The exterior of my bus is covered in unsightly dents, lovingly created by the last owner and sold to us with a couple of thousand pounds off as a result. I can hold my own against all comers.

But jousting with Jags does not make for calm.

And so I thought: I would rather chew my own foot off than drive the motorway route.

But there was a hitch. The forest route crossed a railway track, and that track is closed for six weeks for repairs. One must leave five minutes earlier to take this route. And one dropped the kids off five minutes late.

However, I took the view that forest was best, even with bright yellow diversion signs. I set off purposefully in my favourite direction.

Reader, do you ever find yourself on automatic? Carrying out a series of moves which are so familiar, they simply follow one another without question?

With relentless fatalism, I found myself automatically taking the turning towards the dead end. I was on a road to nowhere. And instantly I was nowhere near the land of calm.

I swung into a side road, hoping it would take me back on course: but alas, after five minutes of driving, I found myself virtually back on my own doorstep, where I had started.

The minutes had moved on, and the traffic was building up to a crescendo. I called my boss who laughed heartily that I had got lost in my own home town. I inched along, with a matter of minutes to spare before my little charges began to flood into their schoolroom.

What to do? How to stay calm when there was one route, and its speed was that of a snail?

I turned on the radio to divert my mind onto a side-road. Maybe I could tempt it away from the red mists which were beginning to swim ominously in front of my eyes.

Talking did not do it. Nor did calm music: that just emphasised what I wasn’t.

So I chanced it: if you can’t beat them, join them.

Radio Three- our classical music channel- was belting out Beethoven’s overture to Fidelio to anyone who would listen.

It is not calm, because Beethoven was a phoenix too. He was a tempestuous man whose restless music ranged on and on, through conflict after conflict, searching for resolution.

I don’t usually like Beethoven, he’s very heavy and momentous, and I like light and shallow.

But my mood was thunderous, and I felt very much like bawling at someone. I was in an extreme place where one visualises damaging other people’s bumpers. Instead, I took Fidelio and turned it up very loud indeed.

I have no doubt I was polluting other people’s day. I would not wish Beethoven on most. But listen to the music which cudgelled its way through the keys, arguing bombastically all the way: it was like having some incendiary older brother fighting one’s corner.

I began to feel better instantly. Take that, I grinned at other drivers, who could not have known what I was thinking with that beatific smile on my face. Take that, and that.  En garde.

I arrived at school very happy indeed, and on time. And I had gained an elder brother.

And so a word to those phoenixes out there, those whose tempestuous lives and chaotic approaches render them slap-dash and fiery.

When one is hemmed in, when there is nowhere to turn, it may just be that calm, cerebral approaches are not quite the thing; it is possible meditation will just spawn rumination on one’s sorry plight.

It could conceivably transpire that what one needs, at a time like that, a a total and utter roustabout to rant and ramble along with you.

Just a thought.