An "ology"

After my last two posts, I can't stop thinking about a series of old British Telecom (BT) adverts on TV that used to feature the life of a woman called Beattie (BT, get it?!) played by Maureen Lipman. This particular one was always my favourite. It seems to have extra relevance this week!

To dream the impossible dream

I apologise for my mad mother cow mode yesterday, but I wanted to shout the good news from the rooftops.

When Kay was a teeny tiny three-year-old, knee-high to a grasshopper, she used to love playing with a nurse's set. She would don the nurse's uniform and cap with the bright red cross on, sling the stethoscope around her neck and call for her next patient. This was usually my long-suffering Dad (her Granddad) who was visiting us. He had to lie down on the sofa and Kay would tell him that he had unfortunately just been run over by a runaway truck carrying glass bottles. Not only had he broken his leg but he had huge shards of glass embedded in his leg too. The most serious of accidents. She would listen to his chest with the stethoscope, then roll up his trousers to his knee and with painstaking concentration pick out the non-existent shards of glass with tweezers. Then she would x-ray his leg, waving her arm back and forth pretending to be the x-ray machine. She would write out a prescription for tablets and pronounce him well and able to go home. She would then call for her next patient (usually her granddad again but using a different voice and of course with a different ailment). This game went on for a number of years only until she outgrew the uniform.

She never outgrew her love to help other people though and, because she is fascinated by the workings of the human body, she always steadfastly maintained she wanted to be a doctor. She would devour every TV hospital fiction programme from Casualty to Grey's Anatomy. People would tell her that what you see on TV is the romantic's view of medicine, that in reality it is a lot harsher, with real warts and all, but still she maintained she wanted to do it. She would scour every documentary about Siamese twins or people with disabilities or real-life operations. She would look into the pictures of fractured bones and gore, often coming up with a diagnosis before the TV commentary had exposed the answer. She even watched her beloved granddad disappear from her eyes with leukaemia. When she was sixteen she did two weeks' work experience shadowing a consultant in one of the local hospitals, where she sat in on clinics and was even allowed to scrub up and observe real operations close-up, done by real surgeons a million miles from George Clooney or Dr Kildare. And she still loved it with a passion.

Her choice of A-levels was therefore none too surprising, but particularly this last couple of years she fought an uphill struggle to study the foreign language of chemistry, the varied miracles of human biology and the complications of maths while her father constantly ranted and raved his way through a blur of whisky. She watched him collapse on many occasions, saw him delirious in a hospital bed and still she fought on. There was many a time when she would be trying to study for a test or write a piece of coursework and she could not get peace because he was shouting all over the house and following us from room to room. There was many a time too when the night before the exam, she could not find a quiet corner in the house to revise. As I have said many times before, Greg is not quiet when drunk.

Medicine is not an easy subject to get a university place for. Every medical school Open Day we went to was punctuated with the difficulty we would face... about twenty applicants for every place... they don't just want straight A students - after all, they are ten-a-penny....they would prefer all-singing, all-dancing ones.... applicants, who not only acted in the school play, but wrote it.... who not only played in the school cricket team but captained it on a recent visit to Antarctica.... applicants who can play the cello standing on their head while singing Ave Maria in Swahili.... ones that at the age of 16 have done their first brain operation.... You get the kind of thing I mean.

When Kay was rejected from three of her four university choices, it came as no surprise. "Sheer numbers of competition" was the standard reason in the rejection letters. You almost come to wait for the next rejection with stoicism. It was therefore with enormous excitement that she was invited to an interview at the last of the four grand institutions in February. To get an interview was an achievement in itself. Even if you get rejected afterwards, that is something to be proud of. At least you almost got there.

When, on the basis of that interview, Kay got an offer of a place (conditional of course upon getting certain exam grades), we were almost beside ourselves. It can't get better than this, can it? Against all the odds. Like a salmon swimming upstream. At least she had tried, even if the bubbling stream were to force her backwards in the end. Anyway, good things don't happen to us, do they?

The exams were hard. (When were they ever easy? Although of course there is much talk of dumbing down of exam papers these days. But a quick look at A-level Maths and Chemistry papers had me whimpering in pain at how I would cope with the answers. Even Kay found some of them hard and she had been studying the material for them for two years. Particularly when the night before she had yet again tried to work with yet another of Greg's outbursts.) Kay was worried about how she had done. In the end, she even had me convinced she had not done well. As each week passed by, I came to believe that she would not achieve her dream. The week in Greece was a great relief for us both, as we could switch off and relax, change the scene, away from the tensions at home, and forget. But once home again, the reality set in. We did not dare to plan for the future. In case. In case it was not to be. We did not want to tempt fate. After all the odds are that there are twenty for every place. Why should we be so lucky? Even worse, we did not have a Plan B. There was never a Plan B. Plan A was all Kay ever wanted.

As this week drew nearer and yesterday's date loomed, we felt sicker in the stomach. We were both nervous wrecks, though I tried to distract and make light of it all. By yesterday morning I felt like a pig facing the slaughterhouse door. Goodness knows what Kay felt. Neither of us had had much sleep. So imagine then, how we felt when she opened that envelope at school and achieved her dream. I still feel as if I am going to wake up and it has all been a pleasant dream. I only hope her Granddad is watching up there from a passing cloud. He would be so proud that he was instrumental in nurturing in Kay an interest that has never gone away.

So again, I apologise for my mad mother cow mode yesterday, but I so wanted to shout the fantastic news from the highest rooftops.

My Cup Runneth Over

Results day and I am pinching myself in case I am dreaming. I know many of you have been kindly keeping fingers, toes and anything else crossed for Kay over the last few days, so I won't beat about the bush. She has got amazing A-level results (after convincing herself and me all summer that she had failed.) So here they are:

A for Maths
A for Biology
B for Chemistry

What is more, the university has confirmed, accepted, definitely agreed it (pinch, pinch - nope, I am not dreaming.) SHE HAS DEFINITELY GOT A PLACE. Ooop North. To study medicine. There, I can even say what she is studying now. I did not want to jinx things before, by even mentioning it.

This has got to be the best news of the year, of the decade, of my life. Thank you everyone for being so patient with me up to now and for supporting me. I really appreciate it. Yayyyyyyyy!!!!!!

Five, Four, Three, Two, One

Five more nail-biting days before Kay gets her A-level exam results. Kay is so on edge she is having anxiety dreams. Sometimes they are based on the fact she has got the grades she needs and is already at university, sometimes they are about the fact she has not got the requisite grades and has not got in. This time next week we shall know her fate. Having waited eight weeks for this, it can't come quick enough.

More than meets the eye

I expect you may have wondered where I had got to this past ten days and whether I had disappeared down a black hole. I had in fact gone to spend time my mother again, this time taking Snoopy with me. Kay did not come as she preferred to spend some time with her friends before they all go their separate ways in the autumn to universities all over the UK.

I seem to spend my life at the moment administering eye drops. Greg had a cataract operation at the beginning of July. My mother had one ten days ago. Antibiotic and anti-inflammatory eye drops have to be put in four times a day for several weeks afterwards. Greg's operation was sudden, complicated by his diabetes. My mother's was long-planned, having waited many years for the cataract to ripen. It was pure coincidence that both operations were within three weeks of one another. As is usual with the operation, the patient needs someone to collect them from hospital and stay with them overnight. This has a lot to do with the fact that the eye is covered for 24 hours with a bandage and plastic shield which can cause the patient to become disoriented and misjudge distances and obstacles. Add the fact that, in my mother's case, the patient is an elderly lady who is prone to falls anyway, my presence was a necessity! I spent ten days with her in all and returned today. As always, we had a lovely time together and managed a few outings to shops and restaurants. I administered the requisite eye drops for her, tidied up her garden and did a few other chores. Because Snoopy was with me, I managed a few good walks with him too. He loves my mother's garden and enjoys rolling on the lawn as well as chasing the seagulls who dive-bomb him, thinking he is a threat to their young even though the latter are safely waddling about on the rooftops. The weather was (almost) in competition with Greece and I managed to top up my tan while I was gardening.

Kay had coped admirably on the home front looking after Greg. She had done food shopping, including lugging it home, cooked meals (which Greg as usual did not have the appetite to eat), stood over him to make sure he took his medication, washed dishes and still found time to tidy her room. Yes, I'll repeat that.... TIDY HER ROOM. I don't think it has seen a duster or vacuum cleaner in months because you have to hack your way into it. A maelstrom of clothes, shoes, books, jewellery and plastic bags covering every horizontal surface including the floor, so that walking across the room is a hazardous occupation and one I have refused to even contemplate in the last six months without a hard hat and elbow pads. I couldn't believe the transformation when I got back today. All this domesticity will stand her in good stead when/if she goes to university. I think too she has found it relaxing not having to spend all her time studying for exams for a change.

One thing that was very apparent to me while I was away is just how much Greg's mind has deteriorated. We would speak daily on the phone and he would repeat things over and over again. He would tell me some piece of news or information at the beginning of the call and then tell me again about ten minutes later as if it was the first time he had mentioned it. He would sometimes go on to tell me a third time. He can recall with remarkable clarity things that happened ten, twenty, thirty years ago. In fact his conversation largely centres on living in the past, recalling experiences and episodes long gone. But when it comes to things that happened or were said ten, twenty or thirty MINUTES ago, it seems he needs reminding or he has totally blocked it from his memory. Kay has noticed this too. One morning she came down from her room, had a long conversation with him over breakfast and then went to watch the television for a while. About an hour later Greg bumped into her and was surprised to see she was awake and had not come down to say hello to him! He had obviously forgotten that he had seen her and talked to her an hour earlier. Things are definitely worse in that department than I thought. Whether it is permanent damage or short-term (only while he continues to drink) I don't know.

Mamma mia

The washing's been done, the cases unpacked, the photos stored on computer, the memories put to bed. We are back home again, though I so wish we were still there.

Oh what a lovely holiday we had. Just a week. A mere seven days, but it was heaven on earth. Endless blue skies, calm turquoise seas, clusters of white villas dotted all over the landscape and temperatures of 46 degrees centigrade or 115 fahrenheit!! That last bit was a bit of a killer, I must admit, but Kay and I darted from one bit of shade to another and only really emerged at 8pm like butterflies from a chrysalis when the sun had gone down and it was cooler (by then as low as 30 degrees centigrade or 86 fahrenheit)! Even in the middle of the night, temperatures barely dropped below 30. How the Greeks manage to live their lives in that heat, I don't know, but you can understand why they need to siesta.



Because of the heat, we did not do an awful lot except relax by the pool or dart between the shadows down to the beach, but we sat under parasols until it was safe to emerge once more. The sea and the pool were refreshingly soothing and lured us from our shady hideaways. A few day trips using local buses to nearby villages and sights also enticed us


from the shade and were extremely interesting. I tried out my pathetic knowledge of Greek, much to the amusement of the waiters and shopkeepers, who looked questioningly at my faltering words and replied in perfect English. We ate a different Greek meal each evening and studiously avoided anything that smacked of English breakfasts or burgers and chips. We sometimes rounded off the evening with a cocktail or two decorated with a garnish of plastic mermaids, straws and other follies. We slept (with the extortionate optional extra of air-conditioning) like we had never slept before. Happy in the knowledge that we were not sharing our accommodation with an alcoholic who could set fire to the place at a moment's notice. A truly relaxing week. It did me the power of good. Mother and daughter getting on like two sisters or very good friends. Sharing secrets and having interesting conversations. Mamma mia, that was a week I shall remember for a very long time.


Our return was traumatic enough. It started by being collected by coach from our apartment at 1 am for a night flight at 5.30 am. This was supposed to be an hour-long transfer to the airport but turned into a two-hour coach-journey-from-hell. Ten minutes into the journey one passenger threw up his evening meal all over the coach aisle because he had drank too much alcohol and the coach had to stop for 20 minutes while he continued to throw up all over the roadside as well. Once the coach had been cleaned up and we had set off again, the coach shuddered to a halt after another five minutes and it transpired the coach had broken down. "Nothing serious", said the dippy blonde tour rep, "just something the matter with the engine!!" We waited another 30 minutes on a dark deserted bit of country roadside for a replacement coach. Once finally at the airport, the check-in was long and meticulous, the overnight flight was cramped and it was impossible to sleep so we arrived back in London at 7.30am having not slept a wink all night. We reached home bleary-eyed mid-morning to find Greg already quite inebriated and a dirty great burn hole in the kitchen floor where he had fallen asleep on one occasion and dropped his cigarette. We were home again... with a bump!

Achtung! Achtung!

By the time you read this, Kay and I will be sitting by a swimming pool in the sunny Mediterranean for a well-deserved break in Greece. It's the first holiday we have had together for five years and my first holiday without Greg for 34 years. It is going to seem very strange, but he is in no state to travel (or be good company) and I desperately want to give Kay a good holiday after all her hard work and before she leaves home. If I am honest I am desperate too for a bit of a break from all the stresses and strains of the last five years.

In the meantime, thinking of things foreign and different, I thought I would share with you the one thing that really gets me shouting at the television. It is when people try to pronounce German names wrongly. All right, I studied German at uni and am, I suppose without wishing to blow my own trumpet (not that I have one) pretty fluent in it. I also lived in Germany for a total of four years, so I do know what I'm talking about.

I don't blame the ordinary man in the street for getting it wrong; after all I wouldn't profess to know how to pronounce something correctly in Spanish or Greek or Mongolian for that matter. But when large companies produce adverts on TV and cannot pronounce them, that is plain unacceptable, because they are teaching all of us to pronounce them incorrectly too. Even the German companies go along with the mispronunciation because they know how useless on the whole English people can be at foreign languages.

Take Braun - the company that manufactures things like hair-dryers and curling tongs. The ad-men would have us pronounce it "Brawn" to rhyme with "prawn". It must make a German's toes' curl rather than their hair, because it is pronounced "brown" like the colour which in fact it is. "Braun" is the German for the colour "brown" and is pronounced the same... "brown". Simples. Or you would think so. No, it has to rhyme with "prawn". Let's make it difficult.

Another example is the German sports car, Porsche. You will hear most people here pronounce it "Porsh", as if they have a speech impediment trying to say "posh". But German words ending in "-e" are always pronounced "-a" at the end. Thus in Germany "Porsche" is pronounced "Porsha". I always feel if you can afford to drive one, you should ****** well learn how to pronounce it properly. It always made me laugh when many years ago a previous next door neighbour - who had his own building firm - drove around in his "Porsh" thinking he was the bees' knees. In my eyes, it made him look ridiculous because he could not even pronounce the name of his car properly. I won't even go there with Audi's Vorsprung durch Technik or how many variations there are on the way people say "Volkswagen".

I could go on with more examples, but don't wish to appear pedantic and pretentious. (What, moi?) For some strange reason it does not sound hilarious when German is mispronounced. But French is another case altogether, as Inspector Clousseau from The Pink Panther and Rene Artois of 'Allo 'Allo would agree. Rant over and spread the word! The correct one, that is! If you tell five people and they tell five people, maybe eventually we'll have everyone pronouncing things correctly. I can dream....



Normal service will be resumed soon! Meanwhile think of us lapping up the Greek sun and hospitality! Now, what's Greek for "a white wine spritzer with a cherry on the top!"

Happy Birthday

My one and only baby is eighteen years old today. It doesn't seem that long ago since she was a helpless little bundle that was so eager to get into this world she barely gave me time to get to the hospital and made her entrance just 90 minutes later.

I thank her for all the joy she has given me over the years...a joy I thought I would never see once I reached the dreaded forty. I thank her for all her love, her hard work at school, her comfort in dark times, her laughter and most of all for just being there. I thank her for keeping me sane. I apologise for being a ham-fisted mum at the start and not knowing which end was which when trying to apply the first nappy! I apologise for sometimes playing the bad cop, when she needed telling. Most of all I apologise for bringing her into this alcoholic environment that most kids should not have to experience.

She is a joy to behold - I wish I could share a photo with you - but for obvious reasons cannot, as I am sure you will appreciate. Trust me, she is stunning and turns heads. She has a wise head on her young shoulders. After all, she survived a trip to the Guatemalan jungle last year and came back in one piece. She knows the dangers of alcohol and promises me she will not drink to excess. She has seen the results painfully too often. However, as the youngest in her school year, she has had to sit out on too many friends' outings to clubs and pubs, as she did not have the requisite 18-year-old ID. She is at least very keen to try that out as soon as she can.

She and I are planning to wander around central London today and do whatever we fancy. Predictably Greg is not up to coming with us. (He has just come back with his daily purchase of whisky). I shall take Kay into a pub and get her to order some drinks with our lunch! Then tonight a quiet meal out somewhere. She is planning a birthday outing later in the week with her friends and they intend to go clubbing till the wee small hours of the morning. Just because they can and are old enough. My baby is no more. My grandmother used to say "small children, small worries; big children, big worries." It's true. When they are little you worry about them falling over and grazing their knee. When they older, you worry about the pressure they are put under at school. As they reach adulthood, you wonder what smart young boy is going to drive her into a tree at 60 miles an hour. I suppose you never stop worrying, but you have to let go. For their peace of mind and yours!

So happy birthday, darling, and have a wonderful day.

Portobello Market

Kay and I went along to Notting Hill in North London today and headed for Portobello Market in Portobello Road. It was heaving with tourists of a hundred nationalities all taking photographs of the area made famous by Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in the film Notting Hill. It took us 20 minutes alone just to get up the steps in the Underground station, as it took the crowds that long to shuffle through.


We spent all day just browsing the shops and stalls on one side of the street and then browsing back along the other side. For those who have never been there, it is a very long road indeed (I believe about a mile long) and boasts the former homes of Lord Asquith and George Orwell. The sights and smells (of street cooking - paella, crepes etc) were amazing

and, of course we managed a bit more shopping for our holiday, even calling into the Travel Book shop (featured in the film) for a holiday guide book.


As it was Saturday, all the antique stalls were out in force today too. Our aching feet told us when it was time to head home again. Feel free to click on the pictures to get enlargements.

Anniversary comes round again

Greg is looking like Long John Silver this morning with a patch over his eye where he had the cataract operation yesterday afternoon. He was not looking forward to the operation (I wondered if they would even attempt it with him full of alcohol, but they did it all under a local anaesthetic anyway). We had been told by various people who had had a cataract operation themselves that the op was not at all gruesome and indeed it went very well. Greg lay down, they covered his face and 25 minutes later they took the cover off his face and the eye had been done. He did not feel a single thing - it was all done with drops in the eye,numbing, melting, soothing etc. So if you know anyone who needs to have a similar operation done, there is absolutely no need to worry. I took the patch off, as directed, this morning and there is not even a lot of redness. I have bathed the eye and put three different lots of drops in which has to be done four times a day over the next two weeks. Seeing as I shall be ensconced in Greece in ten days' time, that could be difficult, but hopefully Greg will be able to do the drops himself by then, if the alcohol makes him see straight!

It is our 33rd wedding anniversary today. Greg wants to celebrate. I can't be bothered. Am I really being that unreasonable?

Back for a while

Kay and I just got back from a lovely week with my mother. The weather was fantastic - mainly hot, sunny and humid with a scary thunderous downpour at the end. We all had a great time, shopping, shopping, shopping, lunching out, shopping, walks along the seafront, more shopping and (oh) shopping. I relaxed, as I was getting quite stressed of late, Kay relaxed, forgetting all about the trauma of exams, and my mother enjoyed our company, as she spends far too many long days on her own.

On our return to Greg today, we found

• he had not eaten any food left in the fridge.
• he had not taken any of his medication.
• he was still wearing the same clothes we left him in a week ago.
• he had not organised a handyman to do an urgent job in the house. I shall now have to get on and do that as a priority.
• he has not reduced his alcohol consumption in preparation for a cataract operation he is having tomorrow.
  
• he had not provided fresh water for the dog (he swears he had but there was grime around the bowl and algae floating on the top! The first thing I did on getting home was to wash out the water bowl and refill it with fresh water and the dog hurled himself at it and drank with gusto!)

Within 5 minutes of being home, my stress levels were sky high again. Grrrrr

Plans a-plenty

As I have mentioned before I am never happier than when I am organised and everything is shipshape. I have been getting a tad frustrated over the last few weeks as I wasn't quite sure how the summer months were going to pan out. All I knew for certain was that Kay's exams were over and that Greg was well and truly in the grip of alcoholism again, starting his first drink at breakfast, half-way through a bottle of whisky by lunchtime and at the end of it by evening. He is doing nothing to help with household chores or paperwork. Everything falls to me. I am effectively a single parent.

Kay wanted to do so much during her vacation, but as yet we had not planned out how and when we were going to fit it all in. This morning, however, I have started to make concrete plans. First, Kay and I will be spending a week with my mother, starting on Friday. Lots of motherly and grandmotherly quality-time planned, trips to the beach, shopping etc. I may even take Snoopy so that he gets a bit of a holiday and releases the demands on Greg when he is left alone at home. We are then back at the end of next week as Greg has to have an emergency cataract operation (the growth of a cataract discovered last year has accelerated because of the diabetes). That is followed by Kay's 18th birthday (not sure what we are planning for that yet).

Then Kay and I will be going away towards the end of July to the Mediterranean for a week's relaxation/sightseeing/Greek hospitality. Greg will stay at home with Snoopy, although I pity Snoopy's part of the bargain. Greg did mention that he might like to come too but as he cannot walk out of our cul-de-sac without getting tired, I cannot see him getting as far as the Mediterranean. But seeing as we have never dared to leave Snoopy behind on any of our holidays over the past ten years, it is best the boys stay home together in any case. I also doubt they would let Greg on a plane in his condition! So, that covers the next few weeks or so of the summer and after that, who knows what we'll plan!

Bring on the Summer!

Kay's last exam was this morning. Chemistry Synoptic. Covering anything and everything she has done over the last two years. She did not seem too pleased about it when she came out, but I never know whether it is her being glass half-empty or realistic. We now have a nail-biting 8 weeks until the results are published before we know whether she has won her place at university or not. She needs to get A, A and B in no particular order for Chemistry, Biology and Maths, but Chemistry is her least strongest subject and she is not confident of even a B for that.

Last night, while she was revising for it, Greg threw a wobbly. He had been drinking heavily all day from breakfast time onwards and by suppertime he was well gone. He had not eaten all day. I had cooked a Chicken Curry with rice for supper and he told me not to serve any for him, as he would have it later, when he felt like it. After Kay and I had served ourselves, the remains lay untouched on the stove right up until 11pm. As I was getting ready for bed, I made the mistake of asking whether I should put it away in the fridge (rather than let the flies buzz around it), if he did not want it. He just blew up and told me to leave him alone. He then proceeded to chunter on about how he never gets any peace (yet we had not been near him all day!) Kay could hear him all the way upstairs as he moaned on and on for a good half an hour or more, while she was still trying to study for this morning's exam. It seems like Greg always seems to lie in wait and save his venom for the chemistry tests and exams! When we came down this morning, he was still asleep on the dining chair in the kitchen. He had clearly not been to bed all night. He did not even wake up as Kay and I clattered about getting breakfast and left the house.

Que sera, sera. What will be, will be. The exams are done and now we sit back and wait. Next week she has to go into school for just one final day to hand back all her text books and say goodbye. That day finishes with the school prom in the evening held at an exclusive golf-club near here. We bought her the most exquisite floaty chiffon evening dress for it this afternoon. Meanwhile, Kay is exulting in the fact that she does not have to use her brain for the next 12 weeks. She is as free as a bird, can lie-in till suppertime, if she wants, watch films, TV, vegetate, gossip with her friends, shop till she drops and busy herself doing absolutely nothing. I give her a couple of weeks before she says she is bored!! Bring on the Summer!!

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?

Greg looks very old all of a sudden. For decades, he was the young man I married, then (puff of smoke) he turned 60. A wand has been waved and he is grey both in hair and complexion, bags under his eyes and he looks ill. Well, he is ill. The alcohol-related illnesses over these past 5 years have taken their toll on his looks, as well as his health, which was not good before he started drinking heavily. He has diabetes, heart disease, poor circulation in his legs and feet, the possibility of early stage liver cirrhosis and (I reckon) depression, which is probably why he drinks. He can barely walk a few yards. Since he retired, he has no interest or energy to do anything, so he drinks and that gives him no energy or interest to do anything. A vicious circle.

He announces regularly that he is going to do so much around the house - mend this, fix that, decorate the other, but he never stirs from the spot where he sits watching TV all day. Similarly there are things he wants to chase up with the household's paperwork (concerning bills, insurance claims or the mortgage) but they never get done. If pressed about them, he will say it is too hot, too cold, too wet, too soon, too late.... the excuses keep on coming. In the end, Muggins here usually does it. Sometimes the one and only job he insists on doing (because, he says, I don't do it properly) - namely loading the dishwasher - does not get done and the dishes pile high on the kitchen work surface for a few days or so. Then in desperation I even do that job, as I try to find a clear square inch to chop up some vegetables or prepare a meal! As for major work around the house, forget it - mind you, he has not done that in about ten years anyway. So in latter years painting and DIY has fallen to me. He has great hopes but they just don't materialise.

Even washing himself, cleaning his teeth, brushing his hair and changing his clothes seem too much for him - I often find him asleep on the bed in the morning fully clothed....in the same clothes he has worn all fortnight. Alcohol becomes the be-all and end-all of an alcoholic's life. Relationships and personal hygiene cease to matter. Ketchup stains on his sleeves, soup stains on his trousers, a scaly rash on his face and in his hair. Constantly reeking of whisky and stale cigarette smoke. He seldom washes or showers - usually only when he has to present himself at the doctor's for a repeat prescription, once in a blue moon. If I "nag" him to wash once in a while, it starts World War 3, so it is easier to say nothing and watch him stagger to and from his car and around the neighbourhood like a tramp. Goodness knows what the neighbours think. You tend to look at married couples as one entity (like your own parents) and don't see them as having separate personalities and separate opinions. Do they tar me with the same brush and think I'm a slob for not keeping my husband clean and tidy? They cannot possibly realise what an uphill struggle it is for me to get him to look presentable. Or have they guessed the truth and all this pretence of a normal marriage which I put on for the outside world has been sussed?

Once upon a time I used to worry about what other people thought. If people came to visit us, it became more and more difficult to conceal the state he was in. If they did notice anything, they tactfully said nothing. If we went out anywhere, I'd feel the embarrassment crawling all over me, as soon as he and I stepped out of the front door. I'd beg Kay not to tell any of her friends, lest their parents found out and wouldn't let their children visit our home to spend time with Kay. Living with an alcoholic can be very isolating. For the last year. however, I have advised Kay to tell her friends, as she needed someone to confide in and to make them understand what was happening in her home life and why sometimes it was better for her to stay over with them, rather than for them to stay over with us. Whether their parents know, I don't know. I don't even care any more. I am running out of resolve. I just don't care any more. Let them see it. Let them judge, if they must. I cannot fight his battles any more. I cannot continue to live a lie.

Exam fever and the Bombay diet

School exams have started in earnest this week in our household. Of course, as always, just when you need to keep cool and concentrate, the weather has decided to climb into the 80s (Fahrenheit) or about 26 (Celsius), so Kay has been sweltering while she revises. Added to that she has had a terrible head cold which is now heading south to her chest, the poor little mite has been struggling to breathe. I have been trying to build her up with brain fodder and anti-virus food, such as salads, fish, blueberries and echinacea tablets. Hopefully that will pay off. The thanks I get for it is that I am now going down with it too. Still, unlike Kay, at least I don't have to bother my fuzzy head with analysis of chemical ions and aldehydes.

Greg meanwhile is now downing the whisky like it is going out of fashion and is currently going through a typical phase of his alcoholism that is oh so familiar - I have seen it many times before in the previous cycles he has been through. When he is well and truly in the grip of alcohol addiction, his appetite starts to disappear completely. He tends to skip breakfast and lunch altogether and only snacks very late in the afternoon, so that by suppertime he says he is not hungry. He declines to eat lunch with us and at suppertime may at best take minuscule portions which would not even fill a two-year-old. He will toy with the food on his plate with his fork and say that it doesn't taste of much....things which under normal conditions he usually relishes. Most of his food then ends up in the bin. At the moment, he is existing mainly on whisky, milk and strange concoctions he makes himself such as bombay mix with salsa sauce! It seems he has to really accentuate the spiciness of his food to get any taste at all. I think the alcohol kills all the little taste buds on his tongue. I am watching out for the next phase which will no doubt follow the usual pattern and develop into the upset stomach/hiccuping phase, followed by the more extreme gastric ulcer/ dash to the hospital phase. This morning he got up retching. Surprisingly that only starts to happen when his liver really has had really more than it can take. I've been there before. Watch this space.

Slipping through my fingers

Last Friday was also another very special day for another reason. It was Kay's last official day of schooling. I say "schooling" rather than "school", because she still has to go to school to sit her exams over the next few weeks, but last Friday was the last day of actual lessons. Ever, ever. It seems like only yesterday morning that I held her tiny three-year-old hand and took her to her first kindergarten class. It seems like only yesterday lunchtime when again I took her hand and introduced her to her first primary school teacher when she was four. It seems like only yesterday afternoon when she boarded the bus heading for the big girls' school aged eleven. Suddenly she is almost eighteen, an adult and able to vote in a couple of months. Heck, how did that happen?

Fifteen years have passed since that first day at kindergarten, in which she has learned the wonders of this world and the basics of reading and writing. I have sat listening to her read her very first books, watching her first shaky attempts at art, helping with those multiplication tables right through to now when at her request I try to test her and have to decipher the totally foreign language (to me) that is Chemistry. I have packed lunches when she used to be a faddy 6-year-old and hated the school fare; packed suitcases for school trips to far-off places such as Cumbria, Paris and Latin America; and packed a proverbial punch in mad-mother-cow mode, if I thought another child in the playground was being unfair or bullying her. I have watched her turn from a small wobbly toddler into a beautiful young woman who without my guiding hand wobbles still on high heels and towers above me.

Where have all those years gone? I must have got here in the Tardis! Her last day of school came stealthily in through the back door. It just cannot be possible. Don't get me wrong, I have prepared for years for this day in my mind over and over, determined not to get all weepy and sentimental, but it still comes like a bolt out of the blue and surprises me just how quickly eighteen years can pass. The time rushes by in a flash. You are happily ticking off all those milestones of losing teeth, growing new ones, different schools, exams, vaccinations and achievements and before you have time to blink, the chicks are leaving the nest. Make the most of your little cherubs while you can.

Anniversary.

My blog is one year old today.

I started writing it because Greg was drinking heavily after yet another attempt at detox and I could not get any professionals to help me stop him or slow him down. I felt I was going to blow a gasket or go mad or both. Everywhere I turned for help, I came up against a brick wall. GPs can only advise or prescribe drugs. They don't really want to get involved on a practical level. Hospital accident and emergency departments just ensure there are no serious problems, patch the alcoholic up and send them back home again without admitting them. (You cannot blame them - they are inundated with drink-related emergencies. Their eyes roll heavenwards when told the patient is an alcoholic). Professional alcohol counsellors can advise and refer for detox, but can only do so if the patient volunteers to seek help (which of course they rarely do because they don't see they have a problem in the first place!) Detox clinics have long waiting lists and (again) the alcoholic has to be the one to make the first move. Families of alcoholics are usually the ones left to deal with the problem on their own and all you can to is try to cope with it on a daily basis. Damage limitation. There is no wonder cure or magic wand. It requires tough love. Love is really a misnomer, because love tends to sail out the window when you are coping with the problem on a daily grind. It is not the person you married and chose to spend your life with. I have always felt that if you had a partner who develops something like cancer or dementia, you would know it is not their fault and you would continue to love them unconditionally, whatever life threw at you. But with an alcoholic who hurls abuse at you and is very much wrapped up in themselves, you are left to deal with a major irritant in your life, sharing a house with a lodger - one whose references you wished you had checked out before you let them the room!

A year ago Kay was trying to revise for exams and having to deal with Greg shouting and ranting as he invariably does when he has got through a full whisky bottle in about twelve hours. Once he is inebriated, his mild temper can rise drastically to Incredible Hulk proportions if anyone dares to interrupt a TV programme he might be watching or contradict him in any way. He will shout if we go to bed leaving him asleep in front of the kitchen TV on a dining chair. He will shout if we wake him to try to transfer him to bed. He will shout over the silliest of things. A no-win situation. Damned, if you do, and damned, if you don't! All this shouting in the evenings coincided with Kay trying to study. She is a conscientious student, but I would defy anyone to concentrate with all that noise going on. Also Greg will follow us from room to room if we try to diffuse the argument by walking away, so often the only real escape is to jump into a car and drive off for a while. But it's not the sort of thing you want to do, say at 11pm, or when you are trying to study for an A-level Chemistry test the next day. So in utter desperation, I contacted the school at least to warn them what was happening at home. They were very sympathetic, as well as helpful, and after that I found the confidence to start my blog. I was close to breaking-point.

I have found the writing of the blog very therapeutic. It is the verbal equivalent of hitting a pillow with your fists. My outpourings have probably saved me many a time from being carted off to the funny farm or dissecting Greg into a million pieces with a blunt knife! Your comments have buoyed me up more than you will ever know, even if I have not thanked you personally, and I feel as if I have made many cyber friends on here. I am so grateful for that. Greg has not been happy for me to write the blog, but I have gone to great pains to change our names and whereabouts, so that he will not be embarrassed or found out by his friends or ex-work colleagues. I have often given him the chance to read it, as I had hoped it might be easier for him to read as a third person about the damage he was doing to himself and to his family rather than me telling him, but he has religiously avoided reading the blog at all.

A year later, so much has happened, but many things stay the same. In September, Greg became very ill again, was rushed into hospital, came out a month later detoxed and returned to a reasonable state of health. But slowly things have deteriorated and he is back to the similar patterns of last year. Not quite as bad, but almost. He is almost back to a full 70cl bottle of whisky per day. He maintains he is in control of the alcohol and will never again revert to the states he has been in in the past, but to see him late in the evening - either angry or asleep on an upright dining chair - it is easy to see what is still in control. He came out of hospital not smoking a single cigarette any more and is now back to about 30-a-day. He has lucid, sober moments - during the mornings I can still reason with him, he will often deal with household issues, or even go out in the car to fetch more supplies of cigarettes and whisky. But already by lunchtime, I am losing him again and by supper-time, he is asleep and awake in hourly turns. Kay and I retire to bed, not knowing if he will fall asleep with a cigarette and burn the house down. It does not do much for my anxiety levels.

In that year, I have also made new friends by joining a local Al-Anon group which is there for families of the alcoholic. I am not sure if it is helping me in the way I would have hoped (ie practical solutions to deal with the alcoholism), but the programme focuses on how to repair yourself, look deep inside yourself and detach from the alcoholic. At the very least it gives me a couple of hours away from Greg each week and, as I have said, it has forged some new friendships. We all have the same in common - we live with an alcoholic husband/wife/son/daughter/mother/father - so there is no need to put on a pretence (pretence is something I am good at with neighbours or other parents at Kay's school or those friends and family who are blissfully unaware that Greg drinks). At Al-Anon we can relax and discuss our feelings openly. Usually someone weeps as they tell their story. Months and years of pent-up emotions come flooding out. The rest of the group gather round and console. The emotional support is palpable. We know only too well what that person is going through. We've been there. Correction - we ARE there.

So, it seems a strange anniversary to celebrate, but celebrate I shall. Whether I shall continue to blog depends on so many factors, most importantly of all whether I decide to stay with Greg once Kay leaves for university in September. My frail, arthritis-disabled mother sixty miles away deserves a heck of a lot more of my attention than I can give her at present and I aim to spend a lot more time helping her. Greg's problems are self-induced. Hers are not. I have no struggle with where my loyalties lie. However, I am still trying to keep an open mind and don't want to make any urgent decisions for the moment. Al-Anon advises - "One Day at a Time", so maybe I should not rush a decision, but I know which way my common-sense is pulling. Al-Anon sees alcoholism as an illness and not something we should berate the alcoholic for. I am not sure I buy into that philosophy, but now and again, it does make me feel more pity for Greg than I used to feel. However, whether I want to spend the rest of my life just watching him slowly drink himself to death (quite literally), I don't know. He sits zombie-like all day in the kitchen/diner watching TV and drinking and smoking. We don't do anything together and we don't go out anywhere together. We don't share a bedroom together. We don't even have conversations. Not much of a life to look forward to, if I stay. But I know that deep down underneath, Greg is still the wonderful man I married. Just like the extremely narrow waist I used to have........ it's there somewhere, just hidden. He was a kind, educated, caring individual. Always the first one to help someone in trouble and to understand the other person's viewpoint. He is a man who, for some strange reason, has decided since retirement five years ago to become an alcoholic and now cannot find the long way back.

The Youth of Today

There are times when I wonder whether the world is going crazy and what the future holds for us when there is so much greed and hatred about. You read so many terrible things about the youth of today in particular, what with knife crime and bullying at school, being spoiled with ipods, laptops and computer games. You wonder where it will all lead.

And then you see these two gorgeous fresh-faced youngsters full of talent and somehow you know everything's gonna be all right.

1. Natalie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mAqUWuJayw

2. Aidan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY0HBEDgeA8

( I cannot get the links up here on screen, as embedding is disabled for these items. Sorry. Just copy the links into your search engine to call them up.)

Medicinal Compounds

Well, I am pleased to say my "cold" did not develop. I think Crystal Jigsaw may be right, when she commented on my last post, and I may have had a touch of an allergic reaction to all the tree pollen about at the moment. I have not suffered from hay fever before, but there is so much pollen around at the moment and conditions are fairly dry, so maybe this may occur again.

Greg has been prescribed some new tablets. He already takes a bucket-load of tablets each day. He has diabetes (for which he injects insulin), heart disease, circulatory problems in his legs, possible early cirrhosis and possible brain damage. The last two brought on by his heavy drinking. The rest probably caused by smoking 30-40 cigarettes a day all his life. The new tablets are to help him with nerve pains he gets in his feet. All in all, he now takes 15 tablets spread over his waking day. The new ones say DEFINITELY NO ALCOHOL. The existing ones advise against alcohol. Greg is now back to drinking anything between half and three-quarters of a standard 70cl bottle of whisky per day. Sometimes he washes the tablets down with a glass of whisky.

If I say anything, he shouts and rants. I really do despair.

Pandemic

I've had a sore throat and cough for the last two days. I've checked that am not sprouting a curly tail and I don't oink when I utter a few croaky words, so I think I am all right. Just a belated winter cold, then. But what with Alleyns school only four miles away in one direction and Kay informing me that a friend of a friend of a friend's brother's cousin has gone down with it at a school only two miles away in the other direction, this swine flu is kinda circling us. I'll keep you posted - if I survive the fever of government pamphlets coming through my letterbox!

Tagged

Three things in one post today!!

First I just wanted to report that we DID go out last night, despite Greg having drunk two glasses of wine and a half-bottle of whisky between lunch and supper. My heart was in my mouth all the time, as his speech was very slurred, he was walking with a deliberate slow gait and was coming out with all sorts of embarrassing comments within earshot of people. When I get anxious, my throat closes up, gets very dry and my old phobia (of not feeling comfortable eating in public) raises its head. Still, Kay and I were determined to see it through and we just nodded to all his comments and tried not to get embarrassed or start any arguments. Once home again, he proceeded to doze off on the sofa and Kay and I heaved a sigh of relief.

**************

Secondly, I have been tagged by the lovely Nunhead Mum of One and will do my best to answer all the questions.

Rules of the meme
Respond and rework
Answer questions on your own blog
Replace one question
Add one question
Tag 8 people

1. What are your current obsessions? Trying to reduce my cholesterol levels. I also want to go on and lose one more stone to return to the weight I was when I was a young slip of a girl.

2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often? Scruffy jeans for walking the dog.

3. What's for dinner? Tonight there will be chicken casserole, rhubarb crumble and custard (a friend gave me some rhubarb from their allotment and I just have to make a crumble, but normally I avoid this for cholesterol reasons - see, I told you I am obsessed with this!)

4. Last thing you bought? A salad spinner (Last of the big spenders!)

5. What are you listening to? The tinnitus in my ears. I've had it for a number of years and it drives me insane. It sounds like the whine of the test card they used to show on TV. Listen here. You only got 6 seconds of it. I have it all the time!

6. What five items could you not leave the house with? Keys, mobile, extra strong mints, lippie, money.

7. Favourite holiday spots? Greece, Greece, Greece

8. Reading right now? Al-anon (for families of alcoholics) literature.

9. Four words to describe yourself: shy, anxious, sexy(??), practical.

10. Guilty pleasure? Baileys, chocolate

11. Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak? My daughter. We can get very silly sometimes and have lots of therapeutic girlie giggles. It's a good antidote for stress - try it.

12. First spring thing? Snowdrops by our front door

13. Planning to travel to next? Regular visit to my mother, who is housebound.

14. Best thing you ate or drank lately? A bar of chocolate - the first I had had since my cholesterol-reducing diet started 12 weeks ago (see I mentioned it again!) An expensive bottle of red wine the neighbours gave me for looking after their cat while they were on holiday. I kept this hidden from Greg and had it all to myself over a few days!! (A very rare treat !!)

15. When did you last get tipsy? At a millennium party!!

16. Favourite ever film? Difficult, I love so many for different reasons, but one that really affected me was Sophie's Choice. I also adore Far from the Madding Crowd, as I am a Thomas Hardy fan.

17. Care to share some wisdom? Life is not a rehearsal. Don't let it pass you by.

18. If you could be someone famous, who would you be and why? Joan Collins. If I'm looking that good at 76, I shall be happy.

19. What did your last text say and who was it from? "Where r u? "- Greg texting me on my return journey from Yorkshire.

20. What is your favourite animal? All dogs and especially my dog, Snoopy. He is the most intelligent dog I have ever known and can understand about 100 different sentences (not just one-word commands but whole sentences.)

The eight people I am tagging (getting more difficult to find ones who haven't already been tagged!!) are:

Fat Frumpy and Fifty

Don't Panic

Kit Courteney

Dulwich Divorcee

Working mum on the Verge

Crystal Jigsaw

Forever Anxious

My Wife has Agoraphobia

**************

Finally, my garden is full of beautiful blossom at the moment. It is arguably the best time of year for colour. Here are some pictures I took last week.

ceanothus (californian lilac)

Choisya (mexican orange)

Lilac

All together

Officially retired

Greg is 60 today. How do you celebrate and what do you buy a man who is an alcoholic and not in the best of health? I have resorted to buying him lots of books, as he has always been an avid reader and hungry for knowledge, so that is always a safe bet. I even have to delicately sift through birthday cards, when buying them for him, as they tend to have pictures of beer glasses and champagne bottles on them.

But how to celebrate? I thought long and hard about whether to put on a surprise party, but then decided against it. The majority of friends and colleagues know nothing at all about his problem, as it only developed after he took early retirement and he barely sees any of them any more. A party would therefore bring it to their attention. They would also find it very strange to have a party with no alcohol whatsoever, particularly for such a special event. I asked Greg what he would prefer and he took weeks mulling it over, but decided he did not really want a big fuss. He, Kay and I hope to go out for a special meal tonight, but I fear he will already be drunk well before then, as he is meeting a few old media work colleagues for a lunchtime drink. As they do not know of his problem, they will probably ply him with drinks to celebrate and he will not be able to refuse the many rounds that will ensue. In fact he will have a field day. I shall then get nervous about whether he will behave himself in the restaurant tonight. That's if he is upright enough to get there in the first place! On the other hand, it is his sixtieth, so he deserves a special day.

Marathon

I am nursing aching limbs today. My back really hurts and my legs feel as if they are going to drop off. Have I been running today's London Marathon? I am ashamed to say I haven't, but it feels like it. Yesterday Kay and I went up to Yorkshire for an Open Day at her chosen university to look at the types of accommodation on offer to her in September, as she needs to put in her preferences soon . We left home at 6.30am, commuted to Central London, took the mainline train up to Yorkshire and arrived in glorious sunshine at 10.30am. From then on we tramped around the city streets on foot wandering first to the campus to collect relevant brochures and advice, then off to each of the Halls of Residence, climbing stairs, visiting show-bedrooms and show-kitchens, then on to the next Hall some distance away and so on. Hop-on, hop-off shuttle buses had been laid on specially by the university for the day, but there were long queues for these and and in any case, Kay and I wanted to test out the distance of the accommodation from campus to get a good idea of the daily walk she will need to do.

By lunchtime we had managed four Halls in as many miles and were flagging, so stopped off at a Costa's for a bite to eat, then managed three more Halls after that. We covered a fair area of the town and must have walked miles and miles - a lot of it on hills that seemed to have a steep gradient. At one point I actually welcomed a very short sharp rain-shower to cool me down, as the combination of hot sunshine and steep hills was not a good one. Apart from the 20-minute lunch, we were on our feet and walking for the whole day until 6.30pm when we were able to collapse into our reserved train seats and commence the 2½-hour journey back to London again. My legs throbbed all the way and are still doing so today. I am used to walking a lot with the dog, but this was something else! We got home to find Greg cuddled up with a half-bottle of whisky, but at least he was interested to ask how we got on. Kay and I fell into bed at midnight and I think I would be there still, if Snoopy had not nudged me at 9am to let him out into the garden.

Fat chance

A while ago I wrote about the discovery that I have a high level of cholesterol. My doctor had prescribed statins to reduce the level but I was against taking them, as they can produce nasty side-effects and it is also recommended that once you start taking them, you have to stay on them for life. Instead, I decided to tackle the cholesterol reduction by diet alone and devised my own saturated-fat-free diet with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, pulses, grains, porridge, chicken, fish and extremely low-fat dairy options. Without even trying to lose weight (remember my sole aim was to reduce cholesterol) I lost half a stone in the first week and another half-stone in the following few weeks. My clothes fitted better than ever, my skin looked radiant, I felt much healthier. I continued this "diet" for ten weeks and had a fasting blood test at the local hospital to measure my new cholesterol levels. I got the results this morning. My cholesterol levels have drastically reduced and the doctor is very pleased with me. It was only then that I confessed to her that I had not started the statins at all, as I had been conscious of all the junk food I had previously resorted to as a comfort in times of stress and hoped that by eliminating the junk and lowering fat in general, I would solve the problem. She congratulated me and said I could now tear up the statin prescription.

As a rule, I normally take prescribed drugs without question, but this time for some strange reason, I decided to rebel and find an alternative solution. I am glad I did and that I have saved myself from possible adverse side-effects. It just goes to show that modern medicines are not always the only answer. Sometimes good old-fashioned common sense works just as well.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - Again

My Easter week away has been one of mixed emotions.

First it was oh so nice to be with my dear old mum who never complains and, boy, does she have cause to. She is not very well at all at the moment. Apart from severe gastric pain which needs investigating (booked at the hospital for 13 May) and which causes her to almost double-up every time she eats something, she has severe arthritis in her spine and knees which means she can barely walk or stand. Despite all this, she almost apologises for her shadow and will thank and appreciate for any bit of kindness anyone shows her. We had a great time with me taking her out and about in the car to get a change of four walls from the ones she is imprisoned in most of the time. We had short walks, coffee sprees, car rides to watch gambolling lambs and blue sky, shopping trips, as well as me doing her garden, sorting out some space in a rather over-used junk room and fixing a few odd jobs.

Greg on the other hand was "supposed" to be in charge of things at home, enabling me to go away. Kay was with him at home, as she wanted to revise for her forthcoming exams, so all he needed to do was be the adult in charge, cook a few meals, be on standby to wipe her fevered brow and take her once or twice to meet up with friends when she felt like tunnelling an escape route. What happened was far from that. First he saw it as good practice for her to cook all the meals. Whilst I would agree that she should get a good run at independent living, now was not the time, as she really had a lot of study work to get through and he had nothing better to do than watch TV all day. But more to the point, as soon as my car had disappeared round the corner on its way to my mum's, Greg took up the whisky bottle and did not let off. I could hear it on the telephone in his slurred voice with its deliberate enunciation. I could almost smell it on his breath sixty miles away. Of course he denied it, too emphatically and too argumentatively. Kay on the other hand witnessed it at first hand and had to look after him rather than the other way round. By the end of the week, he was getting slurred much earlier in the day, forgetting things I had told him several times, even things I had written down in day-by-day notes to remind him. On one occasion Kay was distressed because she had to visit a friend some miles away and needed a lift to get home again late in the evening. He was incapable of collecting her and I was sixty miles away trying to sort out how to solve the problem. And to think he had even put on a concerned look when I was originally leaving for my mum's and ordered me to have a good break and build in some relaxation time. But then he had dashed any hope of that by giving me cause for concern at a long distance over his stupid behaviour.The moment my back was turned. One evening, he kept ringing up to continue an argument long after we had gone to bed and he knew the phone on my mother's bedside would disturb her sleep. He just didn't care or think. My entreaties for him to stop ringing us fell on deaf ears. By the end of the week, I had to leave my mum a day earlier than anticipated as he was again incapable of driving Kay and a friend home at midnight from a party. Just when I needed him to be there for me, while I was there for my mum.

He admits he is drinking again, but only "one or two a day and certainly nowhere near as much as before". He maintains he is in control and promises it will not get any worse. But he said that a year ago and a year before that and a year before that. I have heard it all before. The only person he is deceiving is himself. I can see right through it. In fact I discovered a half-bottle in his jacket pocket yesterday afternoon and it was empty by mid-evening. I just hope he holds off his imminent decline long enough for Kay to do these very important exams in June. The university course she wants requires superhuman grades. She cannot afford his drunken distractions.

After that Greg can please himself and go to hell.

*************

My 22-year-old niece had a bad car accident last week. She was driving back from university on Easter Saturday to spend the rest of the Easter weekend with her mother, when two miles from home she skidded on a patch of grease on the road, bashed into three trees, one after the other and ended up in the middle of the road. Fortunately no other cars were involved and she was able to get out of the car and walk away from it. But here's the rub..... the car was a complete write-off. A passing car stopped and called the police, an ambulance and my niece's mother, who was close enough to get there before the emergency services. My niece was taken to accident and emergency at the local hospital. Apart from cuts and emerging bruises she was allowed home soon after, although it now seems she has belated concussion. There is some suggestion the car may have somersaulted as there were dents on the car roof and my niece cannot recall some of what happened. Her car was full of stuff she was returning home after three years away and was spewed all over the roadside and some of it even landed up in the trees. Most irritating of all, her laptop was thrown into undergrowth and badly damaged, so that the final draft of her dissertation for her university degree may have to be retyped and will miss the deadline she was set.

The terrifying thought of it made me drive like a granny on the way to my mother - much to the annoyance of the car behind me!