Perspective.

Tomorrow is Valentines day - a big deal for card makers and florists in the UK. It's also the 90-somethingth birthday of someone in our village.

Now this particular person is NOT a nice character; vindictive, paranoid, rude and the embodiment of the other unpleasant characteristics that comprise the English landed classes (y'know the type - tweed jacket, tweed skirt and probably tweed knickers too). Chris was on the sharp end of this shortly after we'd moved into the village, and the memory of coming home to her in tears is still fresh.

However, since this person was once a member of that priviledged group, she was brought up to view the world through their manners and externals, and as such is forced into a behaviour pattern. Thus she is obligated invite people she considers significant in the village to a 'birthday party'. We were reminded of this on Wednesday evening. Some of the people at the circuit training session we go to (how to be part of the life of a village) are also involved in the parish council, and therefore significant enough to have been invited.

Anyway, the invites (or lack of them) were being discussed on at circuits. The subject of her singleness had come up, and someone that possibly knew her a little better mentioned that she had lost her fiance during the WW2. I was turning this over in my mind on the way to work this morning, wondering why she was such a sourpuss. God just popped the thought in about how her entire life had been shaped and twisted by this single event, and how she was to be pitied, rather than scorned. She must have been in her late 20s at the time he was killed.

How terrible to have your life twisted by a single event like that.

So here she is, more than 60 years on, having not been able to look beyond that. What a waste.