I went to bed early last night but did not sleep until after midnight. Dan went to his Monday night bridge session and I took my small Bose device and iPod to bed. I am listening to Jodi Picoult's Salem Falls. It's a good novel, about an attractive teacher who has been falsely accused by a teenage girl of statutory rape. After a short spell in jail he happens upon a small town where he gets a menial job, working for a woman who blames herself for her daughter's death from meningitis and behaves as if the child is still alive. That strikes a chord. I hope it all ends happily for both protagonists.
The matter of false accusations is a serious one. The most notable one recently was that of Mark Pearson, a commuter who possibly bushed against an actress in Waterloo Station. She made the most preposterous allegation against him and the Crown Prosecution Service decided that it was "in the public interest" to prosecute him. It has been suggested that this was because of the soap-opera cast member's "high profile". Does this mean that the same allegation brought by a factory worker would have been ignored? I firmly believe that there should be absolute anonymity for both sides in cases of sexual assault until a safe conviction is reached. The accuser in the Pearson case was named on the Internet and had to close her Twitter account down. What a horrible woman she must be, to lie another human being into the dock. It could have resulted in a prison sentence and his having to be on the sex offenders' list for a number of years. I wonder if, had her victim been convicted, she would have waived her anonymity and presented herself as a "brave survivor of sexual assault".
I did not visit the nursing home because Dan was not able to come to the Half Moon with me. He was delayed showing a double glazing fitter around some other flats, so I got a lift with the chairperson. I always take cake and sweets and would have had to take these into the pub. I shall buy cream slices and go tomorrow afternoon when I finish at the charity shop. I hope that whomever I work with tomorrow is congenial and that Judith is in a good mood. I shall buy the little tea light lamp and take it to Vence together with the umbrella stand. I shall bring the tall bread basket back for the charity shop, unless our friends want it for their kitchen showroom. I am looking forward to going to Vence, although I know that I shall start fretting to come home when I have been there a few days. I am always relieved when the Wednesday before our Friday departure comes. I start tidying and ironing and on Thursday morning I put the suitcase on our bed and start to pack. I am happiest of all here, in our flat in the little town in Hampshire. I am not a very sociable person.
When we are in Vence we have to entertain our neighbours from the top floor. She is a very talented artist and he is good company. They have invited us to Sunday lunch and we had a drink in their flat at Christmas. We must return their hospitality this time. They spend time in Brisbane as well; I think that is their main home. I have cousins in that area and one day we plan to visit them again. But for our son and his troubles, we would have spent our wedding anniversary there in 2013. We shall give Nessie and Jeremy good food and wine and provide Nessie with an ashtray. I wonder if Yvonne and Ron will be upstairs too. Yvonne was suffering from a sarcoma on one arm the year before last and Ron had gone through heart bypass surgery. We are lucky to be so fit and well. I was a sickly child but a healthy adult. My daughter's death was because she inherited genes from my father's family; my poor baby suffered from respiratory infections from very early childhood. She died of chronic interstitiary pneumonia, which caused cardiac arrest. I love her and I always shall. I hope that there is a safe, warm heaven where she is with her step-grandmother, Elizabeth. I have no religious faith but I so want to believe that is possible. She deserves heaven and Elizabeth was an angel in human form.
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