I had my day well-organised. But so much for the best-laid plans of mice and men. ‘Events dear boy events’ as Harold Macmillan remarked when asked the most difficult thing about being Prime Minister. At 0901 Swedish time a text arrived. ‘Need your help urgently this morning.’ It was a Film Synopsis for SKF… by midday. So that was the morning shot. On the other hand thirteen hundred words is a hundred pounds in the kitty so I can’t really complain.

My son almost worked for SKF in the days when they were part of the Wallenberg Empire. If my memory serves me right he was up for interview in Gävle…but perhaps it was Sandvik. Anyway he ended up wage-slaving for Asea Brown Boveri in Västerås. With hindsight everything probably worked out for the best because the Wallenberg holding company Investor offloaded SKF in one of their recent investment shuffles…while retaining ABB.

Investor has 85% of its holdings tied up in ten core investments…ABB, AstraZeneca, Atlas Copco, Electrolux, Ericsson, Gambro, Saab, Scania, SEB and WM-data…where SEB is Sveriges Enskilda Banken. Investor bunches these into four groups…technology, healthcare and financial services…worth two billion pounds each at stock market prices…and engineering worth four billion with Atlas Copco and ABB hovering around two billion and Scania and Electrolux making the Investor grade at five hundred million pounds apiece. Not bad for a small country with a population of just nine million But transnational corporations assure us they don’t think in nationalistic terms…although my son tells some amusing stories about the Swiss and the Swedes inside ABB.

Heidi texted me mid-morning and we arranged to meet for lunch. Alan’s last minute discovery of an untranslated piece of synopsis meant turning up without shaving but this has its advantages…a kiss on the lips instead of on my stubbly cheek when we parted at two. I am not sure what to make of these meetings. In the past when a relationship ended I usually moved away avoiding the emotional fall-out problems. Ah well. All part of life’s moth-eaten tapestry.

I felt strangely depressed most the day. I hate Mondays so put the blame on the Romans. But there was the sense of anti-climax after the concert the night before. Sandra said she had enjoyed the concert and it had gone well enough. In Faurés Requiem the basses came in two beats early at one place leading to a ripple of confusion for the tenors, alto and soprano entries. But we recovered quickly and inflicted only ten seconds of dodgy harmonies on the audience…which went unnoticed by nearly all of them. Then there was lunch with Heidi.

Every year well over a hundred thousand divorces take place in this country involving getting on for half a million people. During our lifetime we have a 1 in 2 chance of getting directly involved in divorce. In a sane world we would probably arrange to get married by lawyers and divorced by priests but this is not the way we do it. I know people who still suffer from the trauma of badly handled divorces from decades ago. And for every divorce there must be several times as many break-ups…and breaking up is hard to do. Here is a list of 32 social realities that are not adequately addressed in our present doctrine of divorce. Goodness knows what is to be done? So much misery

Costs of litigation / rise in property values / change in expectations / change in matrimonial roles / the multicultural society / religious differences / employment & earnings of women / the mediation service / choice of jurisdictions / father access to children / prenuptial contracts / no-fault divorce / civil partnerships / long-term impact on children / length of marriage / length of previous partnership / separation of partnerships other than civil partnerships / pension rights / impact of rising longevity / press freedom to report / change in attitude to extra-marital sex / change in attitude to physical violence / acceptance of promiscuity / abuse of children / the 50-50 split / share of future earnings / tax treatment of marriage / decline of the extended family / grandmothers in full-time employment unavailable as child carers / impact of care for the elderly / impact of drink & drugs / impact of modern working hours.

Heidi and I had quite an extensive exchange back in January before our private equivalent of the Valentine’s Day (emotional) Massacre we inflicted upon each other. At one point I remarked that I didn’t feel she was seeing me but was instead inventing some caricature of her theories about me muddled up with her theories about men and her experience of other partners in her life. And I followed it up with a plea to ‘please try to see me’.

In my exasperation I also felt the need to point out that I was not a bundle of categories like man, white, English etc. but a person. ‘Please look for the person’, I pleaded, ‘and not some straw man you set up so you can knock him down to boost your own self esteem. You don't need to do this’. Perhaps not the most diplomatic thing to say.

I ended the exchange by remarking that I did not accept Heidi’s idea that people ‘sort things out and then move on in happiness and harmony’. In my view by sharing oneselves and one’s life one gradually learnt to be kinder and more caring by talking with each other and reflecting on the conversations alone afterwards. There is not some magic make-over with a before and after. Life is problems…and the interesting ones were worth grappling with. T’is said that hell is people…but then so is heaven. William Blake’s The Clod & The Pebble is saying much the same.