July 26, 2007
My Dearest Wife - this is a formal apology for going off the deep end and being violent about drops of water on our family road atlas of France.
The fact is that it brought back unpleasant family memories.
My mother, who had left her native Ireland under a cloud, after a string of abortions, miscarriages, potato-stealing and rent arrears, was stricken by guilt in later years at the memory, and whenever she came across a map of Ireland in the atlas, would weep uncontrollable tears. Often this would lead to terrible blotches on the page, which made it impossible to map read. In order to spare my mother's feelings, my father would refer to these messes as The Lakes of Repentance, and say: "We'll have to do a detour soon, to get round The Lake of Repentance", by which he simply meant that he would be trying to keep to such of the map as was left.
So you can see why for a moment I stopped being the loving husband and became more like Professor Henry Higgins.
It will never happen again.
As I always say.
love