New year - new start?

Will you be making any new year's resolutions tonight? Will you promise yourself that in 2008 you will get up at 6 every morning and do half an hour's exercise before going to work? Or that you will eat fresh fruit every day? Maybe you will resolve that in 2008 you will spend more time with your family or friends. If you're a churchgoer, maybe you're going to think in terms of getting up earlier each morning to start the day with some good quality prayer time.

But whatever your new year's resolutions might be, whatever it is that you would like to change about yourself and the way you live, how are you going to make it happen?

Can you make it happen?

Or are we just setting ourselves up for failure when we make these resolutions? I know, it's very tempting. A new year feels like the right time for a new start, a time for change. But if you've lived on this earth for a bit longer than a decade you will know by now that you've seen new years come and go and the truth is that not much has changed. The truth is that we make these resolutions with all the best intentions in the world, and if all it took was to have good intentions, we'd all be wonderfully healthy shiny people by now.

Of course I used to do it, I used to make all sorts of decisions, not just at new year. Sometimes it was when I'd been to church and heard an inspiring sermon - it was very easy to go home thinking, oh yes, I really will start praying more often; or, I really will read the Bible every day. Sometimes it was a book that inspired me. There were all sorts of things that would make me think that I could really do with changing some things about my life.

There were the sermons/books/whatever that reminded me that as a Christian I'm supposed to be loving, kind and patient. And oh how I tried!!! I kept trying. Now and again the miracle happened and I succeeded - managed to behave in a loving way towards someone at work who generally wound me up - but more often than not I failed miserably. I particularly remember one day at work when I spent half the afternoon quarrelling with a colleague (by email!) over a pair of scissors. When the boss heard about it he sent us both an email saying: I think you're both pathetic and you need your heads banged together. And he was right, it was pathetic behaviour. And especially pathetic on my part as I claimed to be a Christian!

The trouble is, I was trying to be a Christian but I was trying to do it in my own strength, and that's just impossible. Love your neighbour as yourself - does that sound humanly possible? Of course it isn't. Our human nature is selfish and self-centred - yes, we do have that godly bit inside us that brings out some degree of kindness and charity, because we were made in God's image after all. But his image in us has been spoiled since the Fall, so kindness doesn't come so naturally to us. If someone steps on your toe, your instinctive reaction is to express anger in some way, not to forgive.

For years I managed to go to church regularly and still miss the point. Thinking of myself as a Christian and wondering why I found it so hard to live up to that name. Sometimes not even wondering - sometimes not realising that I wasn't living up to it.

What was the point that I'd missed, you ask? Just this: that it is humanly impossible to live God's way, that without his help no one can do it, and that's why Jesus came to die, to pay the penalty that we deserve, because in our own strength we can't make it okay, no matter how many good deeds we do, no matter how many grannies we help across the road, we just haven't got it in us to make up for our sinful nature and we haven't got it in us to change the way we are!

It was on 1 July 2002 that I finally came to the point of surrendering to Jesus, admitting that I can't get it right, that I need his help, thanking him from the bottom of my heart that he accepted the death penalty instead of me, and asking him to be fully and totally and completely in charge of my life from that moment on.

Up to then, I'd been allowing him into bits of me here and there, so some change had been happening. But the moment that I gave my life over to him completely, that's when I was really given a new start, a new life, and it's him who has been changing me from the inside, it's not my efforts to be a better person.

New year's resolution? Here's the only resolution that is really worth making: resolve to give your life over to Jesus now, this moment, repent of your sins (that means not just saying sorry but making a conscious choice to turn away from them, to change your ways, with God's help), thank him for dying in your place, and accept him as your lord and master. Then you will experience a real new start, a new life.

We have a name for it!

There was a news item in my local paper about someone killed in a hit and run accident. And suddenly I found myself thinking: isn't it awful that we have a name for this?

I mean, isn't it awful that someone running over a fellow human being and then leaving them there is a thing that has happened enough times for us to feel the need to give it a name?

There are lots of things like that once you start thinking about it - words and phrases that tell us how low we have sunk. We have words and phrases to describe one person killing another, one person forcing another to do the thing that is supposed to be an act of love, one person paying another for this act, one person offering herself (or himself) to others for sexual gratification, one person physically hurting the person they claim to love, and so on and so forth - all these terrible things that we do to one another, that are so awful that they should really be unheard of, they should be shocking, they should be things that just don't happen...

but they have become things that happen so much that we have given them names.

Procrastination

Today's post included a package from a friend who has thoughtfully bought me a book about time management.

Now to find the time to read it.

Phew! have sent those cards at last!

I can't believe it's come to this - me rushing out to the postbox on the last posting day for first class post for Christmas, with a huge pile of cards which I actually sat down and wrote out yesterday and today, in a mega-blitz which involved putting the laptop to sleep because it was taking up too much space on my desk. Somehow it only dawned on me on Monday that I was running out of time - I blame the shops.

The thing is, you go to the supermarket at the end of August and see the beginning of the stocking up of shelves with Christmas-related merchandise and you sigh to yourself and think, Goodness, they do start earlier every year, don't they... And so throughout September/October you keep doing this, going into shops and sighing and thinking how ridiculous it all is. And so in November you carry on doing that, because by now you've got used to it.

And then one day suddenly it hits you: actually there isn't loads of time left, in fact there is NO time left, in fact I'd better get my skates on!!!

Ho hum. At least it's done now, so there's some chance that I won't lose all my friends this year...

Wearing trousers better for the environment?

I know the connection may not seem obvious, but really, I've found that the choice whether to wear trousers or a skirt can actually make a difference in terms of the amount of paper we use and how much we contribute to landfill. The thing is, trousers tend to have pockets, so when you blow your nose you can put your tissue in your pocket and reuse it. Whereas if you wear a skirt, you're either going to throw the tissue away after using it just once, or you'll stuff it inside your sleeve or somewhere and drop it in awkward places and/or at awkward moments.

It's funny how for years it just hadn't crossed my mind - whilst zealously recycling bus tickets and till receipts, I just didn't think of the fact that paper tissues were also made of paper, and of course they can't be recycled so that's more of a reason to think about minimising their use. I did actually try going back to handkerchiefs, but was always finding that my hankie was in the pocket of the trousers I'd worn yesterday, and when you need to sneeze it is kind of urgent...

Chain emails - please, think before you press the Forward button!

This guy says it so well!

But seriously, there are so many scary emails going round these days, and we could minimise everyone's stress by taking the trouble to check out the stories before we pass them on. There's an excellent website for this purpose: http://www.snopes.com/ - they sort out the true stories from the many hoaxes and urban legends doing the rounds.

And as for the other kind of chain emails, the nice stories - I read them, enjoy them, think how lovely and inspiring they are, and then, wham, I'm hit by the obnoxious bit of emotional blackmail at the end, telling me that if I don't pass this on to x number of people then I'm not a good friend or I don't really believe in God or whatever. Grrrr... But guess what, I've discovered a fantastic secret - it is actually possible to delete that horrible stuff at the end and then pass on just the nice story. And no, there is no secret spy inside your computer that will report you to the chain-email police, though there may be an email coming through to warn you of that too...

There ain't no such thing as a free report...

Goodness me, that assertiveness training did come in handy today!

I saw an advert in the paper recently for a certain consumers' organisation which all Brits know, with an attractive new offer: "For the first time Which? Reports are now available to you on an individual basis without you having to subscribe to Which?." Great, I thought, a step in the right direction! There were a few products on their list which I'm thinking of getting at some stage, and if I can get their report on each of these for 99p then that's good value as far as I'm concerned. So I phoned.

And yes, the offer is for real, and I did eventually manage to get the guy on the other end of the phone to take my £2.97 and send me the three reports I wanted. But clearly the whole idea behind this is to hook people into subscribing - what they tell you on the phone is that yes, you are very welcome to buy the reports you're asking for, but for just a little bit extra they can send you the magazines that these reports came from, and then if you don't want to carry on subscribing all you have to do is phone them and say so. And judging by the hard sell I got in the course of this phone call today, I can imagine how much time and energy I would have to spend on explaining that I really really really am sure that I don't want a subscription, even if they send me a free alarm clock...

The futility of playing Hearts

Here's a confession: sometimes, when I have a very long To Do List, instead of tackling it I find myself playing Hearts on the computer. It's a game for four people, but the computer generously provides you with three virtual opponents, whom you are free to name. I called mine Ernest, George and Leonard, after the characters in my favourite A A Milne poem. (Ernest, in case you don't know, was an elephant; Leonard was a lion; George was a goat; and James - with whom I strongly identify - was "a very small snail".)

But I digress. (Though isn't digressing fun?) Sometimes when I play Hearts I get despondent. Because the way this game works is that you play one round after another (I think the official term is "trick", like in Bridge) and your points accumulate, and go on accumulating until someone reaches at least 100 and then the game ends (with the lowest score being the winning score). So if you have a few awful rounds, you get to the point when you start to feel that this is a pointless exercise (if pointless is the right word to use here in this context...) as you have no chance of winning the game when you're carrying all these awful points from previous rounds - even if you do really well in the next round, you don't feel like you stand a chance.

And I find myself thinking: this is a bit like life without Jesus. You make some mistakes, you do some stupid things, and you go around carrying the guilt from the past and you feel: well, there's no point being good, no matter how good I'll be in the next round, I'm carrying so much guilt from the previous rounds... I was thinking about this recently when reading the book Brick Lane by Monica Ali (an excellent book, by the way) - the main character is a Moslem woman who ends up having an adulterous affair. It doesn't stop her devout praying etc, but she very clearly feels that after what she has done she is heading for hell and that's it, there's no chance of a pardon.

When I finish a game of Hearts and start a new game, I get to start with a clean slate - no previous points. So I start out feeling hopeful: this time I'll do better. Of course I don't always do better, but every time I start a new game I get this new hope. Thank you Jesus that through you I have this hope in real life!

The Scatty Moments Competition

Been meaning to write about this for a while but I keep forgetting... but seriously, I have just had the internet equivalent of those moments when you walk into a room and think, now what did I come in here for - I opened a new tab in my browser and for the life of me I can't remember what I was going to look for.

I started calling these moments "scatty moments" after an occasion when I referred to one of these as a "senior moment" and somebody who happened to know that we're the same age made a comment which indicated he wasn't quite ready to accept the suggestion that at our age we're entitled to "senior moments". (For those who are not familiar with this term - it is a euphemism which I believe was developed in order to avoid saying the word "senile".)

So, I'm hereby announcing the official opening of the Scatty Moments Competition, non-exclusively open to anyone who reads this stuff and thinks they can outdo me. Here are some of my best:

• Far too long ago to blame age I remember making a coffee, putting the milk on the stove and going to put the kettle in the fridge.


• In my days of working in an office, I had a pile of papers which needed to be faxed; I got up from my desk, picked up those papers and walked down the corridor. But instead of turning right towards the fax machine I went straight on to the photocopier and copied the whole lot.


• Recently I took the vegetable peels out to the back garden and opened the rubbish bin, nearly tipped the peels in before realising this was not the compost bin.


• Years ago, when I didn't have a computer at home and I used to go to an internet cafe once in a while, I typed up a couple of poems which I wanted to email to a whole load of friends. Typed up the poems, sent the email, deleted the poems from the computer because I didn't want to leave them lying around on a public computer, then walked home from the internet cafe, and... yes, you guessed it: I had forgotten to click Attach.

Now, what was I doing? Ah, yes, save and publish, that's it...

Creative use of place names

Read the second half of this article for some interesting new meanings for English place names. I particularly like her Rotherhithe suggestion - there really ought to be a word for this.

And Perrivaling is something I'm sure any blogger will have done.

Intolerance in the name of tolerance

According to a brief item in the Faith News section of the Times last Saturday, the general secretary of the Hindu Council UK is calling for attempts to convert members of one faith to another belief to be made "a crime under international law".

So he wants it to be against the law for me to tell someone that I believe worshipping a cow is wrong and that they should worship God, who created this world including the cows?

The amazing thing is that this kind of talk comes in the name of tolerance. It's not just the Hindus. You get this kind of comment from all directions in this pluralistic society we live in here in England - we should all respect each other's point of view, we shouldn't be trying to persuade anyone else that our way is better. Which means tolerance of everyone's point of view as long as that point of view does not include a belief that their way is the right way. Which is not tolerance at all!

If I didn't believe that Jesus is the best way and indeed the only way to God, why would I bother with him? I could have kept things much simpler, stuck to the normal Jewish ways and not risked alienating my family.

Loyalty? You've got to be joking!

I got a new so-called loyalty card in the post today. You know the cards I mean? The ones that give you points for shopping at a particular supermarket, or for spending your money at some other retailer that's part of the same set-up. They call them loyalty cards - at least here in the UK - because the idea is that the points are their way of thanking you for your loyalty to their retail chain. Well, really... Does anyone take this seriously? Does anyone really have a sense of loyalty to a supermarket chain?! How many loyalty cards has the average Brit got in their purse/wallet? I'm not so bad, I've got two... no, three actually, two supermarket chains and one rather well-known chain of pharmacies which does not need my free advertising. So, does this mean I feel more loyal to these chains? or that I would shop there deliberately in order to earn points? That would just be pathetic - at least, I would feel pathetic if I caught myself doing that, making a choice as to where to do my shopping based on their generosity in point allocation.

And the generosity is, of course, exaggerated. Not that they promise more than they give - it's just the way they phrase things. When you're promised an extra 250 points if you spend such-and-such by a certain date, it sounds good, doesn't it? Two hundred and fifty sounds like a lot, unless you do the maths and remind yourself that actually one point is worth one penny, so we're talking about £2.50, which is not really worth the extra purchase, is it?

One thing I'm pleased about though is that some of the chains have started offering key fobs - little tags that you can hang on your keyring and use if you are shopping and haven't got your loyalty card with you. Not that I want to hang this collection of supermarket advertisements on my keyring, but I do have two separate purses I use - one for my own spending money and one for the housekeeping (yes, I know how this sounds, but it is so much easier keeping to a budget this way) so obviously the loyalty cards live in the housekeeping purse, but I don't necessarily have it with me when I'm filling up with petrol. So what they call key fobs I'm using as spare cards - they will not dangle on my keyring, but they will sit snugly in my other purse and come out when required. It's a small thing maybe, but it's nice to feel that in some way you're beating the system...

To stop or not to stop - that is the question

If I was back home in Israel I would have had to have done all my shopping by early afternoon yesterday. The shops there will be closed now till Sunday - they're always closed on Shabbat (Saturday - the Jewish Sabbath) and this year Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year) falls on Thursday and Friday, which means three days off from work (nice) but also three days of the shops being closed (not so convenient). (oh, and no public transport, which is also not hugely convenient if you haven't got a car.)

Here in England there's only one day in the year (Christmas Day) when all the shops close and public transport stops.

So which is the better way?

I don't feel I have answers, just questions. I grew up as a secular Israeli and was thus one of a large part of the population who resented these laws being imposed on us in the name of a religion which we didn't understand and had no love for. Now I do believe in God and know that it was he who gave us the commandment to rest one day a week, and I believe that this commandment comes from his love for us - he knows our weaknesses, he knows we need a rest once in a while and he also knows that we are very good at forgetting that.

And this is what I see here in England, where we have the freedom to shop on any day of the week - I see people forgetting about the need to rest and relax, filling every moment with some sort of activity. Would it be better for us if one non-shopping day in the week was imposed on us (as it used to)? Would it force people to stop for a day and rest?

The trouble is I'm not so sure about that. Those of us who feel they have to keep busy will find ways of doing that, even if they fill their time with church activities. Why do some of us have this need to keep busy all the time? Is it to prove our worth? Is it to show that we're not bone idle? Is it in order to avoid stillness, because we're scared of hearing ourselves think for a change? Is it because we're afraid of hearing God speak to us (because he might have some uncomfortable things to say)?

I've got into the habit over the years of going away on retreat once in a while. I need it even now that I'm out of the rat race, even though I'm at home and you'd think I could easily spend time praying and listening to God whenever I want to - the problem is that when you're at home there are always a million other things you could be doing, and it's not always easy to focus on God when you can see the pile of ironing that's waiting for you. At home there's the computer, the phone, the washing up - lots of things I could fill my time with. Going away to a place that is set apart for the purpose, I can become still more easily and I don't have so many ways of shutting God out.

So in a way I need once in a while to curb my own freedom so that I would be able to spend more time doing what is actually really good for me! Isn't it weird, this human tendency (or is it just me?) to avoid doing what we know is really good for us?

Like I said, I have no answers, only questions. So now it's over to you - tell me what you think.

Jokes - a dilemma

I'm not one of those PC fanatics - just a person with a conscience which annoyingly comes into play at some of the most inconvenient moments, such as when I feel like repeating a joke I've heard but then I realise that actually this joke gets a laugh at the expense of a whole load of people who have done nothing to deserve it. For instance a friend recently texted me a very funny joke about Mick and Paddy - well, it is funny, but it perpetuates the lie that Irish people are stupid, and do I really want to do that? Same goes for blondes, etc.

I found myself thinking about Jewish humour and how back home we used to tell jokes about people being stupid and of course they weren't racist, were they, we just told jokes about the people of Chelm, which was a mythical place where stupid people lived, right?

Wrong. I've just looked it up on Wikipedia and it turns out that Chelm was a real town in eastern Poland which in Jewish humour became the legendary capital of foolishness.

So what do we do? Can we invent a fictional place with some fictional characters so that we can tell jokes about foolishness without perpetuating stupid prejudice? Perhaps we could invent a land called Foolland, where the Foolish live?

Here's my feeble attempt at telling a joke without treading on anyone's toes. Let's see if it works.

Daft and Brush are walking home after a night out and pass the bus garage. 'Let's just steal a bus,' says Daft, not wanting to walk, and offers to keep watch. Twenty minutes later he looks in to find Brush in a flap, 'I can't find a number 7!

''You idiot,' says Daft, 'just take a number 9 and we'll walk from the roundabout.'

How could they do this to me?!

There seems to be a new trend in the world of book publishing. Am I the only one who finds it excruciatingly irritating?

You start reading a novel. You get into the plot, you feel for the characters, you really care about what's going on and how it's going to end.

Then suddenly, when you think you've still got a good twenty pages to go, without any warning whatsoever, the story ends.

Why? Because they've decided to give you a taster of the next novel in the series, so the last chunk of the book is actually not part of the novel you were reading - it's the first chapter of a different story.

I've sort of managed to get used to it with the Alexander McCall Smith books - once bitten etc. And anyway those aren't the sort of novels that get you too emotionally involved, they're more light entertainment, though very good light entertainment.

But last night I went to bed with The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks - unusual in that it is a really good love story written by a man - and I thought I knew where I was because I'd actually noticed when buying the book that there was one of these tasters at the end, and had taken the precaution of marking the page where that bit started so that I would know how long till the end. But no, they had fooled me! Because this turned out to be a special book club edition with a whole section of author's Q&A, plus suggested questions for discussion. So about forty pages out of the book are actually not part of the novel.

I was stunned when this happened. There I was, looking forward to a good chunk of reading, and suddenly - THE END! I think they should put a warning on the first page of such books: the novel part of this book ends on page 283.

I mean, it was a lovely ending, but I just wasn't emotionally ready for it.

Is it just me?

Living in England - a user manual (or: what they don't tell you at Gatwick (part 1)

I've moved this to: http://shabloolinuk.blogspot.com/ where I'll be prattling on about things to do with my life amongst the English.

All this packaging!!!

I got a package delivered this morning. I still can't believe the size of the box. 38cmx30cmx19cm - I've just measured it. It looks big enough to hold several cats, or a few dictionaries. Do you know what it was that I ordered online and received in this box today?

Go on, have a guess...

Think of something really small...

No, really really small...

No, you'll never guess. We're talking about two ink cartridges for my printer. Two ink cartridges! Delivered in a massive cardboard box, with bubble wrap inside, and a huge amount of air.

It's not that I'm a manic green fanatic, don't get me wrong, I do lots of things that would get the green police on my case if they only knew... but you'd just think that companies would have twigged by now about the question of trees being chopped down to make cardboard, and about the need for minimal packaging, and that they would make sure they have different size boxes available for the packaging of different size orders, wouldn't you?

I must say though, today's example isn't the worst I've seen. At least they didn't fill the box with unnecessary padding. I once ordered a calendar online and it arrived at the bottom of a massive box, underneath a mountain of those poly-something wormlike things... what do you call them? I'm sure you know what I mean. It's that stuff that is used for protecting delicate electrical equipment in shipping. If you know what it's called, post a comment here and enlighten me.

So, here's a little ethical dilemma to make the day more interesting: is it better to shop online, thus saving on car use (not to mention the attractive low prices); or to go to the shop, not forgetting to take your reusable bags, thus avoiding excess packaging and also supporting the real (as opposed to virtual) shops, which if we all shop online are going to gradually go out of business?

British Summer Time

I always smile when I hear the term "British Summer Time" (in case you don't know, this is when they move the clocks forward by an hour - what the Americans call Daylight Saving Time, I believe).

I smile because to an Israeli this season in this country doesn't seem to resemble summer at all. Where I come from, we get boiled from May to September, during which time umbrellas are left to gather dust. And here we are in England today, with our new patio furniture wet from the rain... for which I'm very grateful, not just because of the simple equation of no rain=no food and certainly no flowers, but because I hadn't got round to washing my car for a long time and today's rain washed some of the bird droppings off it.

Sorry, what was that? Oh, hmmm... did I have something meaningful to say? Well.... er... no, not really. You don't have to write meaningful stuff in a blog, do you?

How did this happen again?

This keeps happening.

I get to the point where it's just impossible to find anything, not to mention making room for a cup of coffee on my desk. I have a major tidy-up. I survey my nice tidy desk with a huge sense of satisfaction.

And how long does it take till I'm back where I started? This time we're talking five weeks! I know because it was when I got the new laptop, and felt it deserved a clean desk to sit on. Plus I needed space for all those instruction leaflets. Which are... there somewhere I'm sure... I can see something that says "Packard Bell" on it peeping from under some papers. And somewhere underneath I can see a corner of the page representing my email address list, which I was really going to put onto my new computer.

So what happened this time? It might have something to do with the fact that I've started blogging.

You wouldn't believe the things that people would go and do

I was going to write something and head it "et tu, BT?" following my attempt a few days ago to get British Telecom to divulge to me how much they charge for a call to an 0870 number - obviously highly classified information, which you can only receive after giving them your phone number, your name, your postcode, and possibly some other stuff I've forgotten. You may think I'm blowing it out of proportion, but, you know, things do get out of proportion when you've been waiting 15 minutes to talk to someone whilst being constantly told by a recorded message that they are very busy at the moment, which I translate as: we can't be bothered to hire enough staff to answer your calls more quickly. And that 15-minute wait comes, naturally, after the usual ritual of having to press 1 if you're an Aries and 5 if you prefer your pizza with olives.

Tsk. Everyone gets annoyed by these things, right?

And what about those people who dawdle on the road, doing 40mph when the speed limit is 60? Isn't that just infuriating?

And those cyclists who cycle on pavements?

Oh, hang on a minute, what did you say? You do that yourself? Oh, sorry, hmmm, well, now that you mention it, it's not really such an awful thing to do, now, is it... Hmmm... No, you're right, it's not anywhere near as bad as murder... And, yes, you're right, I probably do some things that annoy other people. Actually, I expect there's someone somewhere at this very moment having a moan about people who write blogs in which they moan about all their pet peeves.

The thing is, first of all, to get things into proportion. My pet peeves are only my pet peeves, nothing more. Doing things that annoy me is not, in itself, wrong. (That's because I am not the centre of the universe.)

And when you discover who the person is that was doing whatever it was that was annoying you, and if turns out that that person is someone you actually like, that kind of takes the sting out of the whole thing, doesn't it? I remember a particularly stressful day at work when I got very worked up because when I went to the photocopier and put a page in and pressed the button, what came out was a pink photocopy. Because somebody had used pink paper and forgotten to remove it. I came back to my desk muttering darkly, 'You wouldn't believe the things that some people would go and do!' until my best friend at work apologetically confessed, 'It was me.' That's when I burst out laughing.

And ever since then, when I find myself getting worked up about annoying things that people do, all I have to do is say to myself, 'You wouldn't believe the things that some people would go and do,' and the bubble bursts and I find myself laughing.

So, if you see someone sitting in a car, stuck in a traffic jam, laughing her head off, it may be me...

Happy ending?

Have just finished reading a really nice novel (The Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes) and I find myself thinking:

When did this happen?

At what point in the history of modern fiction did leaving your husband for someone else become a nice happy ending for a novel?

I feel like going in search of the main character, Suzannah, and saying: Excuse me, but what exactly did you think when you said all that stuff about "till death do us part"? Did you have your fingers crossed behind your back as you stood there in your beautiful wedding dress, thinking, "Yes well... of course what I really mean is until I have some sort of midlife identity crisis and ditch you for someone with more fire in his blood"?

How annoying that not one of the characters voices the view - is it really considered so outdated?! - that following your emotions is not necessarily the best course of action, that marriage is something to work at! Sorry, no, I now realise that there was one person who voiced that opinion - her poor husband when she told him she was leaving him. I wouldn't be so annoyed if he had been an awful husband, but his only fault seems to be his ability to remain content in the face of all the turbulence that life and his wife were dishing out to him. So he puts up with his wife binge-shopping them into debt, he puts up with his wife being moody and impossible when she's setting up in business, he puts up with her changing her mind about having children with him, he puts up with her general spoilt brat mentality throughout, all because presumably he actually took seriously those vows they made when they got married, but then his wife just suddenly says she's leaving, and that's that. End of marriage.

Okay, I've got that off my chest now.