What makes a person behave in a certain way? What motivates their words and actions? I found out yesterday that someone had, in effect, slandered me. I couldn’t understand why or how they could be so unkind and malicious, and after a few tears, I began to try and understand what makes a 60 year old woman so bitter and twisted!

 Basically, she made up a base lie about me, in the hope that it would go to our mutual boss, who would then decide to sack me. Sadly for her, she is the one who has now been sacked and I am still “in there”. Is that karma coming to bite her on the bum? Does what go around generally come around – eventually?

I think she had been made pregnant at a fairly young age, unmarried and in the late ’50s. Her son – she told me during one of her interminably long gossip sessions (you know the ones where you just make a noise at the appointed moment but don’t actually have to put anything into the conversation pot) – had diddled her out of lots of money, she is not allowed to see her grandson and she now lives alone with her shivery whippet called Wally.

 She sat in the same office as me for 14 months, and knew I was getting married last year. She did not offer one word of congratulation or a good luck wish – not that I would have wanted it anyway. I had been starting to feel a little guilty that no one had done her a leaving card when she finally left last week with her tail between her legs – not unlike Wally the wimpy whippet – but the moment I found out about what she had tried to do to me, all guilt or ideas of social nicety evaporated into the ether.

I just hope that isn’t the start of me becoming a lonely old bat with just a bag of bones for company.