Mother of All Government Think Tanks

For years I have been irritated (flattered, but irritated) by my friends asking me for advice. There have been several reasons for this: I am bothered by the responsibility; it gave my husband an opportunity to poke fun at my friends (at one stage a certain friend of mine had a disorder of the nether regions, the details of which she regaled me with at length. Every time the phone rang and it was she, said husband would say 'Oh Christ, it's the daily c--- check'); and the phone calls invariably came whilst I was doing something really important like watching 'Friends'.

Since I have been confined to the chair, however, I have, sometimes, welcomed the diversion. Now that there is nobody to laugh at the conversation, and as I have grown in what could be termed either confidence, or more accurately, foolhardiness, I have dispensed erudite half-baked off the wall wisdom at length over the telecommunications network.

How pride cometh before a fall.

I don't know whether this is a precursor to senility, or whether it is time to bow out gracefully, but I just looked at the comments on my daughter's blog (Everything is Electric. Sorry, don't have the technical know-how to link to it), and one of her commenters has described her as being better than a government think tank.

Oracle to Cassandra in one smooth move.