Day one: Reporter Amanda Nunn muses on uncontrollable rage and lollipops

Before I frighten any of you off from contacting me – I am generally not an angry person.

Giving up smoking yesterday however, seemed to transform me into a jaw-clenching, pen tapping and anxiety ridden volcano.

The rage started in the morning as I turned the key to my usually reliable car.

After a loud bang, plumes of smoke started billowing from the bonnet which made an industrial plant look environmentally friendly.

When I finally made it into work, noting that my colleagues were avoiding making eye contact with me, I read an email complaining about an article I’d written the previous week saying I’d got a fact wrong.

This raised my annoyance to DEFCON 4 because, as I could prove from an email I’d kept, they’d sent me the wrong information in the first place.

Then the rage started to spill out in unreasonable, and sometimes humorous, ways.

The first was complaining about the bag not being left long enough in the tea my editor had kindly made me (not smart), then banging the computer mouse when a story wouldn’t go online (doesn’t help) and finally to actually growling at someone on the phone (just plain weird).

After lunch the anxiety set in and I bought myself a lollipop and sat eating it at my desk like a terrified six-year-old.

After a couple of hours, completely out of nowhere, the anxiety lifted and I felt completely fine.

From talking to other people that have stopped smoking the first three days are the most difficult but I must admit I did feel a slight sense of achievement having got though the first day relatively unscathed.