[Varley]

So why do we do it? I venture to suggest it is selfishness. We expect to get enough out of a relationship to tolerate the inevitable grief of loss.

It is better to have had a pet basket which is now empty than to not have had a pet basket at all.

It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.

On the first I concur. On the second I have never dared.

We have just passed our own assisted dying legislation. We are still not allowed to go whenever we like but I accept there do have to be safeguards and, of course, for those very brave medics that have always put a little too much in the final nightly syringe, if not perhaps, with quite as much gusto as Shipman or the 'snobbery by proxy' of Lord Dawson.

Those who would choose their exit on the 'permanent way' are truly selfish and those who choose to be found hanging the hall or exsanguinated in the family bathroom only slightly less so.