This blog has been fermenting for two days – usually it's 20 minutes from idea to keyboard. As I mull over the 'antics' of these women I know, I blame myself for intolerance - the parable of the 'Prodigal Son' comes to mind. Now next day (19th January) and LillyPet's blog on being 'nice' has added fuel to the fire. Here are three 'case histories' and how they affect my feelings.

They all have the ability to annoy, starting with sympathy and ending with blame. The first woman I have actually banned the house. She is 'cliquey', given to rowing, is always right, and tells you forcefully. Her husband died of cancer before he was fifty. So, due for pity. Apparently 'she did her own thing' and was not exactly dutiful or faithful. She is said to have received a very large insurance payment. She's done three cruises since he died, and is always at 'girlie' lunches. I have had an invitation to the latest boyfriend's birthday party – it says 'please bring food and drink for the table!' She's English, boyfriend (he's 80 actually) has lived here 12 years and hardly speaks a work of French.

The next, a peculiar set up – French man separated from wife and four sons, English woman who lives with him, and whose husband lives in the next village. The 'couple' are trying to be declared bankrupt as they are seriously in debt. They both have professional training, neither stayed in any job long enough to get a pension, so they only have state pension. The husband was a teacher until acute ill-health stopped him, he has the only money, it seems. She complains of extreme bad health, arthritis – can't walk, but insists on having two huge dogs. Doesn't obey her doctors, takes powerful pain-killers, and I've seen her drink a litre of red wine at a lunch party. She insults her 'partner' in public. She is mercurial, all over you one minute, cut you dead the next. She has alienated her partner's sons, they can't stand her.

Number three is the wife of a great friend – she has been very welcoming to us. She is a reasonable cook, if very heavy on calories. She eats her own portion in a third of the time of the rest of us, often with mayonnaise or ketchup. She is always snacking, and drinks a lot – she is up with acute indigestion most nights. She had a knee operation – then, on holiday, insisted on driving on a Mediterranean island, loads of gear changes and wrecked the knee, provoking dangerous side effects, blood clots etc.

Perhaps because I now spend so much time among acute suffering I look at these woman, who have brought ALL their ills on themselves, and I cannot have any sympathy for them. Now, I have to live with this tendency to say 'Serve you right'.

Can you be seen as 'judgemental'?

The Gardener

A Moodscope member.