A friend’s spouse is going through a psychotic phase. I suggested that the spouse be given a blog of mine that she had read before and enjoyed when it first came out, as a distraction.
It worked a bit, in the sense that the spouse remembered the episode featured in the blog, and laughed about it, which probably kept her happy for a little while, distracting her from her psychotic state. Like my distraction therapy for myself (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/05/chinese-sayings-38.html).
This suggestion of mine (that the friend should get the spouse to read my blog which she’d enjoyed the first time round) came from an episode one summer’s day on Highbury Fields in north London.
A child was walking along, a part-eaten apple in hand, crying her heart out. Maybe she’d seen the ice cream van but was told by the adults that she couldn't have one (ice cream, not van).
She was bawling and bawling, then she noticed the part-eaten apple in her hand. She stopped crying, took a bite out of the apple, chewed the mouthful of apple, swallowed it, then went back to bawling.
It got me thinking at the time, “So, that heart-rending sound [the crying] was for effect then, to get what she wanted, or what?”
Whatever, she was still distracted long enough by the apple to put her grief (whatever it was over) on hold until she’d had another bite at it.
(London, 1980s)
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