Terry Jarlsberg

So make sure that you have as much information as possible, and make sure that your information is as specific and high-quality as you can get it. In other words, follow the course of action that I've recommended. No, it makes you cautious. And your caution is justified when you have others' needs to consider.

I'm going to recommend a course of action that makes further demands on a scarce commodity: your time. If I read you correctly, you're worried because your future seems to be at the mercy of factors beyond your control, ille sunt the jobs market and possibly the housing market. The most effective way of starting to address your worries would be for you to start sounding out those markets. It would also perhaps give you a sense that you're starting to take your destiny in your own hands. So first, look for a new job. Don't limit your search geographically: do a nationwide search, do a Europe-wide search, do a worldwide search if necessary. At the same time, put your house on the market. After all, you don't have to sell your house if an offer comes along at a time when it's not convenient; and you don't have to take a job just because it's been offered to you. But you'll start to feel more upbeat as you start to see evidence of demand on both fronts. And think how you'll feel if you get the timing right, and you've got a nice redundancy package, a new job lined up and a buyer for your house. As you see, I think that you should give more serious thought than you appear to have hitherto to the option of moving home. However difficult this process proves to be, you can't allow the housing-market situation to force you into taking a regressive step career-wise. And there is one factor that favours a move: the fact that you have just one person's employment needs to consider.

I make it ten months. Sounds reasonable to me!

No, it's a phrase.

How well do you know Bishopstoke?

Oh sorry, Bewitched: I do get carried away. I'm sure that you're joking anyway. I'm sure also that you can take my basic point: the corollary of subtracting points for youth, as Momene has done, is surely to award bonus points for old age, as I'm proposing that he should do.

And using plenty of lube?

But that's because yours is a free-floating intellect: you see life as a complex, amorphous mass that can't be easily pinned down. If you could live for a day inside a more mediocre mind, you would not feel such scorn for those who seek easy answers, who aren't blessed with your ability and will to pursue ideas wherever they take you.

It's moutons noirS.

If she had a hooked nose, why not?

I notice that all the maths is being done at the lower end of the age spectrum. Just as you've tightened the numbers to account for the fickleness of la jeunesse, do you not think that you should relax them to account for the certainties that come with age; that you should cut the vieillards some slack? I would suggest subtracting a month for every five years by which the younger partner exceeds sixty. What do others think?

What if you've a disabled child? Do you double the figure before halving it? Or do you simply act as you would with any disabled dependent and halve without doubling first?

Disrespectful my zadnitsa!