Solitude

You don't know what it's like trying to cope when your father goes swanning off to Obergurgl every five minutes. I'm stuck here all on my own apart from the dog, and he's enough to drive you round the bend now that he's gone pretty much senile, climbing into my bed every five minutes and taking up half the space. I'm there teetering on the edge and the dog takes up the whole of the middle of the bed. It's not fair, I tell you. And it just throws you out of your routine when nobody else is around. I mean, your father normally puts the newspapers in the bin every day, but now he's not here, I've just got them piling up. I just can't be expected to deal with change, not at my age... And then there's bloody clock to deal with. I think it must be foreign or something. They have different numbers in Slovakia and places like that, don't they?