With just two weeks to go until Lisa's birthday, the good news is that Amazon are now selling the perfect gift for the woman who has everything. As long as 'everything' includes a Kindle. It's so reasonably priced too. There's even an American version for people who can't spell.

Bearing in mind the contents of my recent blog posts, it means that I'm now literally selling my sole. Or possibly flogging a dead horse. Obviously, for the same price, you could cure cancer instead, but where's the fun in that? I might not cure your terminal illness, but I'll give you something to read in the waiting room. I think I'll get Lisa to put that in a review for me.

Unfortunately I can't ask her at the moment, because she's left me for another man. Yes, it's true, I've finally driven her away. Via the A27 between Brighton and Hastings. I've taken her and Amelie east this evening to stay with my parents for a few days. Lisa's still housebound due to a gap in her teeth and a hole in her heart, so with me out at work all day, Am's going stir-crazy. Quite literally. She can't stop playing Cookie Maker on the iPad.

So for the sake of all our sanities, Lisa and Am will be living in St Leonards for a while, where they have access to a garden, a paddling pool, and two grandparents who'll take Am to the park every day. And possibly bring her back too.

In the meantime, I'll be spending two days on an NHS Assertiveness & Self Confidence Course. I signed up a couple of months ago in the hope of learning how to use specific assertive techniques appropriately at work, make flexible and realistic plans to cope with difficult situations, build upon my individual sources of self confidence, but above all, learn how to stop taking crap from the hordes of deranged mental-heads that populate my daily life. Present company excepted.

I saw the course advertised on the staff intranet back in May, and I remember discussing it with Lisa over a meal at The Brasserie at Brighton Marina. I was interested in signing up, but as I said to Lisa at the time, I don't think I have enough of a problem with assertiveness to want to bother my boss by asking for permission to take a two-day course.

At which point I realised I do.