I drove up to Crowborough yesterday to visit the 'Hospice in the Weald' charity shop. Admittedly I had to do a clinic at the hospital while I was there, but that was a minor inconvenience. As charity shops go, it's always been one of my favourites, and has achieved Weald-wide fame as the place to go for quality films and cheap laptops.

I'm not sure I've ever been inside without buying something, and yesterday was no exception. I picked this up for a song...

The song being 'D.I.V.O.R.C.E.' by Dolly Parton.

Obviously there's very little a book like that can teach me, but I thought I'd buy it for Lisa, so she can see where she's been going wrong. Especially after she had the nerve to give me a 'D' in the Relate Heart-to-Heart test.

It's written by Dr Steven Simring and his ball & chain (I bet their relationship's simring hot), who are apparently "America's foremost husband-and-wife marriage-counseling team", so with a bit of luck, it should help us make it to our second anniversary. Although if not, there's a chapter on remarriage.

In addition to 'Making Marriage Work for Dummies' (which is much harder than for normal people), the Hospice in the Weald also had a copy of 'Rekindling Romance for Dummies'. I flicked through it, but decided against buying that one. It seemed to be all about taking your wife away for weekends, and frankly I'm too knackered. So I stuck with the book above.

Interestingly, however, having arrived home with my purchase, given it to Lisa, and narrowly avoided being hit around the head with it, I noticed a piece of paper stuck between the pages. It turned out to be the Amazon receipt for both books, dated 18th November 2002. The addresses at the top appeared to explain the reason for purchase...


It can't be easy making your marriage work when one of you is living in Japan.

As it transpired, however, that wasn't the case at all. Reading further down, I found a personal message from the buyer...


So John came across two books about saving your marriage, and decided to give them to Malc and Joelle for Christmas. It makes Madge seem positively friendly.

Fortunately, the world is a wonderful place. One day, you're buying a marriage guidance book in Crowborough; the next day, you're entering a stranger's name into Google. It turns out that John has a website. I might e-mail him and ask him what he was thinking.