A day of mixed news. →[More:]

First the bad news: A friend at work emailed me to tell me this:

You remember my niece, R? She recently began seeing a new fella, and in the heady excitement of a new relationship, talked of her and him settling down together, with her daughter, my great-niece, S.

News of her plans reached her ex husband, S's dad, who, fed up at the prospect of S acquiring yet another "uncle", called in Social Services. They called round earlier this week and gave her the full Third Degree treatment, and apparently threatened to take S into care. This set R off into a spiral of depression & drinking. The new boyfriend's first reaction was to threaten to beat up the ex-husband. His second reaction, bearing in mind he'd only known her for three weeks, was to decide that R came with too much baggage, and so yesterday he dumped her.

This morning, R's sister H called round to take S out for the day with her children, mostly so that S would be out of harm's way if R went on a drinking binge. R said she would be OK, and would come over to H's place and join them in about an hour. Twenty minutes later, H's phone rang; it was the Police and Fire Brigade.

It's too early to know officially what happened, but the most likely explanation at the moment is that she killed herself by setting fire to the place.

And now the good.

George's sister, Diane (who some of you have met in Vegas and New York) has been deathly ill for some months with liver failure. And I mean deathly ill, as in "if we don't find a liver really soon you'll die" ill.

Today she got her new liver. It fits, it works, she's got a long road ahead but at least she gets the chance to travel it now.

I'll be seeing her next month when I'm in the States, and I can't wait. I'm closer to her than my own sister and I love her dearly.