I have great admiration for people who can turn the other cheek, or let bygones be bygones, particularly when someone has been particularly hurtful or nasty to them. To shrug off such incidents and get on with life takes a certain attitude of mind, one that is both practical and forgiving. Much more easily understood and more often encountered are those who take umbrage and then let umbrage grow into grudge.

This is perhaps only human nature: if one has feelings, you might say, one is bound to have grudges. However, the trouble is that unwontedly touchy people are often their own worst enemies. As their list of grudges grows, their list of friends diminishes, not because their friends have abandoned them but because they cannot forgive their friends for the slights they have made them suffer. Often these friends are not even aware of the offence they have given.

Grudges come in all sizes and shapes. There are the minor grudges, triggered by, say, someone failing to thank you for a present posted to her, or not replying to an invitation. Then there are the social grudges where, for example, someone has failed to invite you to her son?s wedding, a grudge you bear even though you know that names being accidentally left out is an occupational hazard in even the most organised of weddings. There are even third party grudges, caused by someone, who sometimes you don?t even know, being rude to your best friend or to your second cousin twice removed, or whoever. Tucked away in the grudge archives are also those that you have inherited from, say, your mother, who was never able to forgive a house guest who trashed her house when you were six or seven!

And then there are those ancient grudges that have festered in your mind for years. Every so often, you excavate them, dust them off and air them, so that they remain fresh in your memory. But alas, the cause of this grudge that you have so assiduously harboured over the months or years, has been obliterated from the mind of the person responsible! When you finally confront that dreadful man who insulted you in 1977, you find that he remembers neither the context, nor the conversation, nor for that matter, you! You may be angry and frustrated by such a reaction, but as any true blue grudge-collector would say, you now have the seed for another grudge!

Is there a secret thrill to holding a grudge? Reacting with anger and hurt to a slight is only too human, and such resentment is in fact a grudge. What perhaps is bad is holding this grudge, instead of shedding it by perhaps clearing the air immediately and accepting an apology. Fortunately I have an in-built mechanism for dealing with grudges. Saddled with a memory so bad that it retains little or nothing, it is difficult to remember a grudge long enough to harbour it!