Last weekend they let me out for two days. Good of them I suppose. Three weeks of therapy and diet and Ministry funded peace and quiet, followed by a weekend at home.

The bosom of my family, my dearest wife close by. Only, her bosom was denied to FoxWriter. Just a glimpse of bra and bare bottom as her nightie is shrugged on. Even so, female flesh fleetingly glimpsed in the raw is much better than page 21 of Men Only. After so many days in a single cold bed it was good to snuggle, even if there was no damn response. What went wrong? Why am I a stranger in her bed?

But now, here in late July, I am much blessed and trusted by being allowed home on Thursday chez Renard. Home until Sunday pm. Mrs Fox is off to her (solitary) bed and I am here, glass of Red (my old friend) in hand, allowed the freedom of the InterBabbleNetWeb unsupervised. Apart, that is, from the good and upright gentlemen and ladies of SW1P who, with my best interests at heart may rescind my weekend 'pass' and send me back to deepest Gloucs. and that delightful Georgian house with the pleasant medical ladies and muscular male orderlies.

But I digress.

My breakdown, all 6 days of wandering wilderness in the Black Mountains, sodden nights under cheap canvas, starlit skies and shivering clothing, the final vicious punch-up in that nondescript Welsh Borders pub (apologies to the hefty twentysomething yobbo for his broken jaw and the 2 MPs with multiple contusions - not what HMG trained me for at all), followed by interminable incarceration in that beautiful Georgian GL16 house has been therapeutic if not conclusive. I do, be it whispered, feel better but not yet 'right'. Gallons of intravenous Marmite or whatever those white-coated sods have pumped into me, hours of bland chats, 'therapy' and conversation, many, many nights of blank ceilings (how I hate blank ceilings) have numbed me but not quite 'cured' me. I am sure they will, but maybe a few more weeks are needed yet.

But, I am home for the weekend and, I want to take this opportunity to apologise to someone I adore for my silence, someone quite beautiful. She knows who she is, what she is, but does not recognise how wonderful she is. I am truly sorry for my breakdown, my (as the official phraseology puts it) 'PTSD'.

I will be driven back on Sunday - more therapy, more supression of long ago awfulness but, thank God, no evisceration of the recent past.

A plea to SW1P, my good friends, please do not delete this innocent and heartfelt post, simply accept it as the ramblings of a blogger of little consequence and a 'weekend pass'.