It’s a word that I associate with Shakespeare’s King Lear. A violent word, one that threatens destruction. She talked about it terms of clouds coming over the eye. Yes. It makes sense now but it was a shock to see how little of those lines of letters that I could decipher. Take your time, she said. But time, it seems, is something I don’t have.
We talked of a neighbour who looks after his daughter’s dog. It’s a sweet little thing. White, fluffy and mild. He said how different the dog had appeared when the daughter visited. Unrecognisable. Neither the father or the dog want to be together. They accept it. It is their fate – he walking ahead, the dog on a lead, behind. They cohabit, appreciating, even respecting, the gesture. But it is joyless. A joyless marriage.
