A FRIEND of mine — a strapping man even at his leanest — announces recently that he’s put on the bones of a stone.

I’M in the cinema with my husband.

A MAN comes down the aisle, munching chilli nuts and looking left and right.

MY HUSBAND came home once and pinned a piece of paper on the kitchen wall when my children were younger.

IT’S 6am and my husband tiptoes around our room in a Kerry B&B, careful not to wake me.

I KNOW a lady, in her eighties now, who used to take to the bed from time to time, when her children were living at home.

IT’S MORNING and I’m in the front gardens of a pretty Georgian terrace.

PEOPLE enter marriage with all sorts of odd needs that have to be stitched in so the seams hardly show. This is the stuff of compromise, which is the stuff of relationships. But some needs are easier to harmonise than others; weird sleeping habits need to be accommodated, but they’re tricky.

I’m walking in London to the Tube and happen to glance down at my hand.