I am home. Lots of bunnycards await me and I will open them in a minute. But ... →[More:]... I just got off the phone to my sister. Her husband left her on Christmas Eve.

He's 20 years younger than her, and, of course, there's another woman. He left her briefly for someone (else) a few years ago and she took him back but she says she won't this time.

But they have a lot of debt, they just built a big conservatory on their house, they each have new cars on finance, and she doesn't earn enough to buy him out of the home, or to take on her own car finance, I suspect.

Apart from one act of revenge (putting chilli powder in all his underpants) she's being fairly sensible, she's having the house valued by several different estate agents next week, and is also seeing both a financial adviser and a lawyer.

There's a pattern here though. He's her sixth husband and, at almost 10 years, this marriage has lasted longer than just about all the others added together. One of the reasons he gave her for leaving, aside from the other woman, is that my sister's dogs are just too much (she has miniature dachshunds and a blind springer spaniel - it's only two years old and was born with no eyes and is the dog from hell, totally out of control). I've heard this before from three of her previous ex-husbands, that her dogs just end up overwhelming everything else in her life.

When she married this husband, she had no dogs and said she wouldn't get any because she knew they'd become a problem in past marriages. But then she kept on and on until he relented and at one point she had 17 mini-dachshunds, which over the years have been sold or died, and she now has just two, but was looking to get more. There's also a cat and an aquarium of fish.

She lives about 130 miles from me, and I don't see her very often, but I noticed on my last visit that they spent very little time together and that my sister was very much in full-on nag mode.

It's going to be a hard year for her. Shit shit shit.