Ah well, so here we go, another supper shot for tonight – it’s late, I’ve just got home and I need to work at my so-called day job for another couple of hours before giving up.

I got out the sweet Romero peppers that I was about to stuff with tomatoes and a tiny bit of blue cheese (diet) for our supper and decided I liked this one’s deformed smile a lot so a few experiments with lights and stuff later I have this. I’m sure I don’t need to say it’s not spectacular but I reckon in the circs it’s lit quite well and overall I quite like it. More to the point, it does illustrate my point well.

Anyway, the smile is a reflection on the way that life can deal you some pretty shitty things from time to time and I suppose the only way to climb through the wilderness on those occasions is to smile. Last year was a time when I was struggling to do that – especially this time last year – now it’s the turn of a friend.

This story just seems so tragic that as I’ve made it anonymous I hope my friend doesn’t mind me repeating it here.

It’s the story of a woman whose life was ‘sorted’ - husband, kids, lovely home etc etc until her husband went into mid-life crisis and ran off with his secretary who he’d been having an affair with for some time, it later transpired. Now I’m not suggesting that men are the only ones to do this sort of thing because I do know many-a-woman who’s done it too so don’t go getting all ‘it’s always the man’s fault’ on me! (But don't you just know how often you hear that?)

Anyway, she finds herself alone trying to bring up kids. Presumably in a fit of needing to feel loved and needed, she struck up a relationship with a new man. It started fiery and passionate but right from the start he was ‘caught out’ a couple of times with other women and huge fights ensued. I reckon the ‘making up’ must have been pretty damn good because she never saw what others saw in the way he behaved.

Recently the passion has cooled quite a bit and he’s been 'disappearing' quite a bit. By accident, she caught the man ‘with his pants down’ as they say so she confronted him. He concocted a complete cock-and-bull story about why he'd done it. What did our heroine do? She swallowed it.

Who knows whether because she loves him so much she can’t bring herself to break away or, perhaps even more sadly, she sees it but has decided that she can’t face the thought of time on her own again and would rather pretend not to know, which is something I was once an expert in.

So, she’s now driving herself crazy with suspicion, doubt and fear, which from personal experience I know never goes away. Hopefully she’ll get her eureka moment soon when she realises that surely life on her own for a bit has got to be better than a cheater and a liar – it took me nearly six years to do it and I truly hope she doesn’t put herself through it for that long.

I hope a smile returns to her face soon……

Don't you just find the meta-gallery throws up all sorts of stuff you wish you'd not had to share space with - tonight I wish that more than I have for a long time.

Actually, I think that on this day last year, I was having a good day - a highlight in an otherwise really gloomy time.