Anne Brisden

So I think...

Ultimately, I guess he is making, I think, he's making the judgment that maybe men need to sort of wake up a little bit and realise that there is things out there in life and you don't just sort of doddle on through life until you realise you're over middle-aged and there's nothing more.

I felt that was the conclusion I came to, that Warringah really was saying something, maybe a call to action, I don't know, about men who are in that age or maybe men generally, I don't know, to actually...

look at life differently, not just to wander through and get to that point and realise.

I mean, all of the themes in there about Paul lamenting so often in so many ways that there was nothing really happening in his life other than the Blessed Rita, and that's going to close anyway.

And, you know, looking bleakly at the fact that his father is ageing considerably, it is very bleak and very much...

call, I think, to action about making sure that your life has more purpose in it rather than just expecting the purpose to be provided to you.

Carol had warned me time enough that she was going to leave.

So when I got home late from playing cards and drinking at Winston's and found her gone, I wasn't surprised.

She'd taken off to her parents' place, dragging the boys with her.

She'd done the same three times before in the last six months.

It was two weeks before she'd come to the phone when I called her.

Eventually she said she wouldn't be home again unless I showed commitment.

She wanted me signed up for a program.

Is that all I have to do, honey?

But this is different.

The house is like a morgue with you and the boys gone.

It's a real promise.

I smiled as I put the phone down.

Rory Collins, a mechanic at the garage and an amiable man whom I drank with from time to time, had a brother-in-law who'd worked as a drug and alcohol counsellor before he'd fallen off the wagon himself.