Cuckoo!!

Of course, I had a difficult pregnancy! Not only did I suffer with the dreaded high blood pressure from the very beginning, but there was also the added complication of learning to do housework for the first time. And let me tell you, learning to iron a shirt is a harrowing experience when you've already turned twenty-four!

He virtually abandoned me in a strange land, the man I married did. Went and joined the Police, didn't he, then disappeared into the winds of the Welsh countryside on an Advanced Driving course, leaving me to cope with my difficult pregnancy and the washing up?

He phoned me often though - I'll give him that - to see how I was coping. "It's the English summer," I told him. "I don't like it! The days are too long. The wretched birds wake up at

4 a.m. then sit in the lilac tree by my window bragging about it." (I had discovered In myself a deep-seated loathing of cuckoos. The beastly things sound exactly like their mechanical counterparts in those quaint little Black Forest cuckoo clocks one used to admire. That's what three hours of unremitting 'cuckooing' can do to a person.)

"Yes, darling, I'm fine. But look, don't worry if you hear reports about a mad, pregnant woman, running about the village in her nightie trying to kill a cuckoo with a brick. It's only me."