Summer Solstice Sentiments

Book of the Week: Queen Camilla by Sue Townsend

It has been a very eventful couple of days. Yesterday evening and this morning in particular were especially painful for both of us for extremely personal reasons, but matters were resolved before lunch today and now we look forward to what we hope is a new beginning (and possible future). We will share more of ourselves with each other (which, for me, means an opening up of a deeply private and meaningful part of my life), see how we go from there, and hope (and pray!) we work out. It IS quite scary because things could go so horribly wrong, but we both really want for this to happen and because of that are prepared to work at it – we have so much together, are so good together, want to be together, and could have the rest of our lives together. There’ll be hard choices to make along the way, but we want to give us every chance. We don’t want to lose us.

We had planned to walk the Fife Coastal Path to Aberdour today as our little celebration of the summer solstice, but had to put it aside due to the mental and emotional upheaval of the last 24 hours. It has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now and had been looking forward to the walk all week (I just feel I should be outside on the longest day of the year, or it’s just a complete waste of sun), but I can’t say that I’m completely disappointed. As Dad always said, a sign of maturity is the ability to delay gratification. (And the weather was rubbish today, anyway.) What matters is that we’ve got us sorted, and that means so much more. We can always do it another time, and I think the stress should be on “we”. Because we still have a chance to be “we”, and that means everything to me.

Factoids of the Week:
It IS possible to die of a broken heart. The less-than-romantic explanation behind it is that an increased levels of stress hormones in the blood and psychologically induced changes in behaviour brought about by grief can lead to a greater risk of dying from heart attacks, accidents, violence or alcohol-related problems.

There were 29,898 marriages in Scotland in 2006, out of a total of 275,140 in the UK. And with the average wedding now costing £20,000, it makes one wonder if it is even worth getting into all that debt given the following statistics...

Between 2005 and 2006, there were 13,014 divorces in Scotland, out of a total of 148,141 divorces granted in the UK. For all divorces granted, behaviour was the most common fact proven. (On a more positive note: the divorce rate is at its lowest level since 1984.)

In Scotland, there are five grounds upon which to base an action of divorce: adultery, desertion, unreasonable behaviour, separation for two years with the consent of both partners and separation for five years without the consent of the other party.