A surprising sequence of disputes, flare-ups, misunderstandings and ruptures between men and women in the past two to three weeks was beginning to merit serious attention.
The Kid and I were due to spend the Sunday before Christmas with a friend and his daughter. This was prevented at the last minute by my buddy's estranged wife, who arbitrarily decided that the child's latest school results were bad enough for her to be deprived of her day with her father.
Yet normally the relationship, though not always easy, doesn't entail such drastic measures as the cancellation of the daughter's eagerly awaited weekends with her dad, which struck me as mean-minded double punishment.
Having reported two turns in the twists of my own life, I was granted a true confession at the Canteen by somebody who does not wish to be named. A pointless but sudden row with his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, which led to her walking tearfully out on a party, began with her remarking on the way that he was wearing non-identical socks and had lost a button on his overcoat.
These observations were the first heavy drops in a verbal hailstorm. At least that pair have since kissed and made up, but he says neither of them can quite understand what happened or why.
Then Tony left my 'phone a message on Wednesday with all the pith of his brief e-mails: "I'm back from Switzerland after a visit between squalid and grotesque. See you, chum."
He promised me the details once I saw him tonight after a day in the Factory. While there, I kissed a previously unsighted French colleague a very "Bonne Année" and all that, only to be told, "It can't be much worse than the start of it!"
Her New Year's Day, she explained, had begun with the revelation by her long-time partner that he was unceremoniously packing her in for somebody else.
All this is not to speak again of similar occurrences linked to as part of last night's entry here and spotted during my cruise of the 'blogosphere.
Enough already! When I arrived at Tony's, I was too tired to let him waste money on a dinner he wrongly thinks he owes me for some minor surgery required by his Mac, but while I fixed up the computer he regaled me with his Swiss adventure.
I've said before that I greatly admire this man in his '70s for making arduous and fairly regular train journeys to see far-flung members of his family in Britain and the other side of the Alps.
He arrived in Lausanne after a four-hour trip from Paris's Gare de Lyon, which I know from experience to be the city's only horrible one even for finding your train because of bizarre platform numbering and lettering and a lack of panels and helpful staff. In the holiday season, the place is a manic hell which can exhaust even the youthful almost before they have left.
The person who was supposed to be meeting him in Lausanne was nowhere to be found. So rather than hanging around in that station's deep subterranean tunnels forever, Tony pursued his rail trek as far as Bern. Where his ailing eyes fairly swiftly made out three people awaiting him. Including the woman who had been due to fetch him at Lausanne.
She was so vexed at whatever mishap must have occurred that she disappeared on sight, without a word. Leaving him with the other two.
"After that," he said, "I felt like a packet being delivered from one household to the next."
Meditating on these various events as I returned from Tony's, I began to wonder if it's more than coincidence.
Has this latest season of peace on earth and goodwill among men been singularly ill-fated? Could it be in the special foods people gorge themselves on or has something got into the water? Are those nonsensical "astrologers" who lump whole months' worth of us together in their annual forecasts actually right about the dark workings of Saturn? Worse, how long is it all going to last?
Then I got home to a miracle.
A handwritten note in my letter box on the ground floor said:
"Mr Barrett. There is a small packet for you, tucked away under your doormat. The postwoman."
Now this girl is a friendly and cheerful creature, but never before in all the years has she clambered up four flights of stairs to leave me a parcel!
When she's particularly well-disposed and the gardienne is in, she'll let her sign for it to avoid leaving me the standard form requiring me to queue for ages at the post office to get it.
If she did climb all the stairs in every building, her daily rounds would take her a week.
The packet from London contained that book by and from Natalie I mentioned: 'The Joy of Letting Women Down: Secrets of the Worshipped Male.'
A second, unannounced tome was included: 'Augustine's True Confession.'
Both have every appearance of being most entertaining and informative satirical reads. Not only am I very grateful -- thank you, Ms d'Arbeloff! -- but you appear to have broken the increasingly inexplicable cycle I have seen in inter-sexual relations.
After all, had I been the post girl, I would have been sorely tempted to delay delivery of a package containing such instructive delights until I had devoured them myself. Let alone climbing 81 wooden slats to leave it right outside somebody's front door.
Especially on a Saturday, which is when Madame la gardienne puts such a bright sheen of polish on those stairs that they become almost as slippery as a Swiss ski-slope.
10:54:26 PM link 
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