Think I'm finally out of tears. The trick is to stop drinking water and substitute hard liquor; this makes the leaking go away. All Grieg's fault. He started me off, Mozart and Tchaikovsky exacerbated it (although I did myself no good by choosing Le Nozze di Figaro and Nochevala Tuchka Zolotaya and the String Quartet No. 1) and by the time Beethoven strode into the room to the sounds of his magnificent 5th Concerto, I was lost. They all ought to be lined up and shot, spiteful ... *illegible*


And so when a woman is worked into such a state by a handful of miserable old men, what is her remedy? When, 'desolate and sick of an old passion' or twelve, she finds her circumstances so desperate that she starts on the really old brandy, not just the reserve stuff but the bottles older than she is that she's been saving for Lord knows what, what is she, an otherwise sober and rational woman to do?


She's to bloody well go and buy herself the largest, most glittery rock she can find and hang it off whatever protrusion seems available and appropriate.



Damn right she is.