As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.

Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.

As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.

In my country we say that ignorance is the warm bath in which it is comfortable to sit but dangerous to lie down.

A man needs enough...no less, no more.