Dad's Breakdown

I once wrote the reasons for having the nervous breakdown I was proposing to indulge in in one column

The reasons for not having one were to go in the opposite column

The reasons for having the breakdown were difficult to establish

One of them was：the woman I think I'm in love with though I wasn't entirely sure that I was had just told me she is a lesbian

And she has fallen in love with her woman psychiatrist

You may well laugh

I certainly did when I wrote it down in my portentous breakdown column

I felt better

The young woman in question then went on to have affairs with gay men

I put it all down to her father

Who is a retired naval commander who invested his money in footling projects like selling clip on car boots which only fitted one model of Rover

Which was then withdrawn

Then there was her brother

Who had acquired so few life skills that he could only sell the Encyclopedia Britannica to the intellectually challenged

The right column set reasons for falling about laughing as one way of seeing the world

At least in one point perspective

As for shades of grey

Well

I like grey

It's a friendly

Comforting colour

And

It was good enough for Giacometti

I went into Richmond today

And everything looked delightfully grey and muted

Grey faces smiled at me through the traffic fumes

I wouldn't swap this paradise for the Bahamas on a balmy day

I said to Ted Evans

Our security officer

A former police officer

And ex police marksman

Who had taken me to Habitat to collect the new

Neutral

Good taste light fittings I had chosen for the hallways in King George Square

What do you think