Therapy

accepting the cut and for my vacillation over whether to do anything about it. My knee has begun to throb, like a rheumatic joint sensitive to the approach of bad weather. I sense a storm of depression flickering on the horizon, and a tidal wave of despair gathering itself to swamp me.
    Thank God. Sally has just come in. I just hard the door slam behind her, and her cheerful call from the front hall.
     
    * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
     
    Friday morning 19th Feb. There was appeal from MIND in my mail this morning. First time I’ve had one from them, I think. They must have got my address from one of the other charities. Inside the envelope was a letter and a blue balloon. There was an instruction at the top of the letter: “Please blow up the balloon before you read any further, but don’t tie a knot in it.” So I blew up the balloon, and on it, drawn in white lines, appeared the profile of a man’s head, looking a bit like me actually, with a thick neck and no visible hair; and packed inside the cranium, one on top of the other, like thoughts, were the words: BEREAVED, UNEMPLOYED, MONEY, SEPARATED, MORTGAGE, DIVORCED, HEALTH. “To you,” said the letter, “the words on the balloon may seem just that — words. But the events they describe are at the heart of someone’s nervous breakdown.”
    Just then, the doorbell rang. Sally had left for work, so I went to the front door, still holding the balloon by its tail, pinched between thumb and index finger to stop the air from escaping. I felt a vaguely superstitious compulsion to obey the instructions in the letter, like a character in a fairy tale.
    It was the milkman, wanting to be paid. He looked at the balloon and grinned. “Having a party?” he said. It was half past nine in the morning. “Your birthday, is it?” he said. “Many happy returns.”
    “It just came in the post,” I said, gesturing lamely with the balloon. “How much do we owe you?” I fiddled a ten-pound note out of my wallet one-handed.
    “Cracking programme the other night,” said the milkman as he gave me my change. “When Pop Davis hid all those cigarettes around the house before he gave up smoking... very funny.”
    “Thanks, glad you enjoyed it,” I said. All the local tradesmen know I write the scripts for The People Next Door. I can do instant audience research on my own doorstep.
    I took the balloon back into my study and picked up the letter from MIND. “Just as the words grow larger with the balloon, so somebody’s problems can seem greater as the pressure on them increases,” it said.
    I looked again at the words packed inside the head. I’m not bereaved (or not very recently — Mum died four years ago, and Dad seven), I’m not unemployed, I have plenty of money, I’m not separated or divorced, and I could pay off my mortgage tomorrow if I wanted to, but my accountant advised me against because of the tax relief. The only way I qualify for a nervous breakdown is under Health, though I suspect MIND was thinking of something more life-threatening than Internal Derangement of the Knee.
    I skimmed through the rest of the letter: “ Suicide... psychosis... halfway house... helpline… ” After the final appeal for money, there was a PS: “You can let the air out of the balloon now. And as you do so, please think about how quickly the pressure of someone’s problems can be released with the time, care, and special understanding your gift will give today.” I let the balloon go and it rocketed round the room like a madly farting bluebottle for a few seconds before hitting a window pane and collapsing to the floor. I got out my charity chequebook and sent MIND £36 to provide somebody with a specially trained mental health nurse for a morning.
    I could do with one myself today.
     
    Last night, after Sally came in, we talked in the kitchen as she made herself a cup of hot chocolate, and I had a scotch. Or rather I talked, and she listened, rather abstractedly. She was feeling languorously euphoric from her sauna and seemed to have more than usual difficulty in focusing on my professional problems. When I announced that the lines about abortion had been cut from this week’s script, she said, “Oh, good,” and although she saw from my expression that this was the wrong response, she typically proceeded to defend it, saying that The People Next Door was too light-hearted a show to accommodate such a heavy subject — exactly Ollie’s argument. Then, when I