As the World Turns

Ken Parish has given us a couple of interesting glimpses into life as he lives it recently. I'm not sure that Ken has been completely happy with some of the comment he's been getting. The first comment on this post is pretty idiotic and I think Ken might be entitled to throw down the gauntlet and demand that its author (who I have good reason to suspect is a serial forgetter of anniversaries) share some of his own brilliant insights into human relationships. Either that or improve his impulse control.

Now that the vicarious irrascibility is out of the way, I'd like to turn to this article by Allan Fels in Friday's Age.

Mental illness is a subject that sometimes comes a bit close to the bone for me. It did on Friday because, on Thursday, I learnt that my ex-sister-in-law, Bea, had been admitted to the psychiatric ward of one of our major hospitals. Bea has had problems for years and they've caused her family a lot of distress. Learning that Bea had been hospitalised was still a bit of a shock but nowhere near the shock I got the first time that I learnt that a friend had been confined to the cuckoo's nest. If I had the statistics, I could probably work out, based on the observed rates of psychiatric disorders in the population, how many of your friends you can expect to go completely ga-ga during your life. It might cure my grumbling suspicion that I haven't found my fair share of sane, normal friends.

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