Don't believe everything you read.

Am I alone in not wanting to read the papers, these days? If I do click on 'Telegraph' or 'Guardian' on my browser toolbar, I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach while the page loads that I'm about to read about the end of the world as we know it. The French press, which has done a passable impression of an ostrich at least since I'm lived here, is a little less depressing, but I don't need to read the papers to see what's going on in this country. It's fragile and it's worrying. Maybe that's why I've lost interest in everything outside of my blessed profession, which deals only in civilised art and beauty; it's a kind of self-protection. Sod this world and where it's going.

Slumgullion

I've just learned this word. And it's fabulous. It could describe Toulouse's culinary speciality, cassoulet. Look it up.

Well…

Just got a call from Mrs. F, stating the bleedin' obvious: that they were at the family's place and didn't know when they'd be home. This was only two hours after I'd have received a ritual castration for doing the same thing. Why the fuck does this bother me so much? She gets on well with her sister-in-law (as do I) and it's great that the Fingernails play so easily and well with their cousins, but it's this complete disregard for anyone else which every visit seems to engender. In the olden days days of truly disfunctional, underachieving co-dependance it was a true plague, slamming the brakes on any initiative and ambition Mrs. F and her siblings may have had. These days, the family vortex takes place under a more benign star in a different location, but the germ seems to remain. I think she'll only really be free when they're all gone. Mrs. F is the only one in the family to have had the nous to leave and pursue her own life and I still feel guilty for dragging her back to her home town, but work was work and the best gig was here.

I suppose I should see it differently; that she feels so relaxed and easy that she simply loses all concept of space and time when she's at her brother's place. Right, that's going to be my one-step plan to further understanding my wife. I just hope she's as understanding when I choose to stay out all night with that shapely lighting designer from work…

Unless I'm very…

…much mistaken I think I'm writing a carbon copy post of last week's rant about my divine spouse going into family vortex again. Dinner's been ready for an hour and there's neither sight nor sound of either her or the Fingernails. I honestly don't know why it upsets me so much. It's the lack of consideration I suppose: no call, no message, no note, just plain ol' absence and no explanation upon returning. If I did the same thing I'd be chastised or - which amounts to the same thing - given the silent treatment. I don't do silent, I think life's too short for that kind of pussying around. At the risk of repeating myself I'll stop right now (I can't be bothered to check what I wrote last time). Grrr.