CHAT MAGAZINE

Back to the doctor's this morning. I picked up a copy of Chat magazine in the waiting room.

Stabbed with a stilletto... over a bag of chips

Hunger pangs? No, it was a baby!

Every article in Chat starts the same way too.

"It was a completely ordinary day..."

"I thought my life was perfect.."

"I was picking up the kids from preschool as usual..."

Then something outright awful happens. She discovers he's cheating on her. A child collapses. The babysitter robs the house, aliens attack, or the ground opens and swallows her or something... I barely got to the end of any of them. I suspect each one ends with them learning how to cope with being socked in the eye by a high-heel in the chip shop... or whatever it was that happened.

There was one article in Chat magazine though that made me raise an eyebrow.

"It had started raining on our wedding day and so he ran down the steps to meet me halfway with an umbrella..."

Apparently, one in seven newlyweds is unfaithful in the first year of marriage. He was good with an umbrella, but six months later he was "sheltering someone else from the rain."

Reading through the stories, I realised something extraordinary: none of the couples in the article had talked about monogamy at all before the wedding. I mean, in one sense, I understand - it's kind of taken for granted. But if you have no strong faith to hang your marriage on, surely it would come up at some point? The article was suggesting that talking about your marriage before your wedding would be a 'good idea'. I'll say.

I rested Chat magazine on my knees and thought about it. Maybe I'm a bit naive.

Another extraordinary thing was that women were more likely (8% to 4%) to be unfaithful, and that the probability of infidelity was again, much higher if the couple had lived together before getting married.

I flicked over to the crossword.

It had clues in it like: "Paid attention (8)" and "Small rivers (6)" I did the top corner of it in my head before getting bored and flicking through the rest of the glossy pages.

I was just chuckling at the sarcastic horoscope, when two elderly men came and sat down beside me. They weren't together. One was with his wife, but they all seemed to know each other.

I looked up and smiled. The gentleman folded his hands on his lap. His wife shuffled into a chair on the other side of the room.

"You're on the seniors bench then," she said to him, loudly. He laughed.

I dipped out of Chat for a moment, back into the reality of the waiting room, and raised my eyebrows as though I'd just heard something utterly unbelievable.

The screen flashed up with my name, so I folded up Chat magazine and went in to see my doctor.

"How is your mood?" he asked.

I told him.