Everyone, whether male, female, old or young, will, at some point in their life come to accept that mistakes we make NEED to be learnt from.

Whether it was the little white lie you told to save someone's feelings from being hurt, or that enormous black lie you made up to impress someone, karma ensures that these things have a way of coming back to bite us squarely in the bum.

Recently I had the chance to "do the right thing" and tell someone the truth about my social plans, but opted to take the easier way out and tell a bit of a fib to get out of having to explain myself.  Doesn't sound like such a big deal, you may be thinking, but, wait!  Do actions not have consequences?  Did I not then go on to tell the TRUTH to another person who related that story to my friend?  The opinion of the friend to whom I lied being of great importance to me, I was dumbfounded to learn that the acquaintance to whom I told the truth had known of my original lie and had told my friend merely to cause trouble.  I could have got mad at this deliberate act of cruelty,but I did not. Why?  Simple, because no matter how awful the intentions of the acquaintance, it was my decision to lie to my friend and expect to get away with showing a blatant lack of respect to her.

She has, for almost four weeks now been quite cold towards me.  I do not blame her.  If I had stopped for a second to think about the "bigger picture" I would have realised that if I had just told the truth in the first place, she may have sulked for an hour or two, but then she would have appreciated that I had been honest with her from the start.  Now, though, I seem to spend all my spare time sending her apology notes and downloading little poems and friendship greetings from the web to inundate her email with.  How stupid does that make me?!

In case she's reading this, though, I would like to add apology number 73 for today to the end of this blog, and say Hannah, please forgive me, I should have known better, but now I know I have learnt from my mistake.

If you have a dilemma hanging over your head, PLEASE don't do what I did and take the easy way out.  Stand up and be a man/woman and tell the truth.  You will find it really does set you free.

Well, as you can see, it is almost 0130 and I have dragged my sorry carcass through another October the 8th without actually taking my own life!  Seems a bit drastic, you may think, but not really.  October 8th is the birthday of my darling daughter, Emma Louise, and this year she turned 18.  Just one more year without her in my life.  Because of our family, I missed out on so many aspects of her life, and each passing day only serves to remind me how much I adore and miss her.

I wasn't there for her first day at high school, nor her first crush, or even the day she bought her first CD.  I don't know what her taste in clothes is, or what music she likes to listen to, or even what food she absolutely refuses to eat!  I have no idea how she did in her exams or whether or not she has gone on to college.  I do not know if she has a boy/girlfriend, or even if she is happy.  Have you any clue how miserable this makes me?  Probably not.  I hope, from the very bottom of my heart, that anyone reading this will NEVER know the pain and misery of being separated from their children.

If, as remote a chance as it is, you are reading this, Emma, I only want you to know one thing - I love you to the moon, and the stars and back again.  Happy 18th birthday my precious one and, as I do every year, I wish that this will be the last one without me there to hug you.