Our Village's Paul McCartney and Heather Mills

Recent news that a judge awarded the equivalent of almost $50 million to Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife Heather Mills in a divorce settlement makes me flash back on an equally acrimonious marital break-up in our little village last year.
In our case, the vicious fight over community property was not over hundreds of millions of Brtitish pounds in assets but rather the only thing of any value the village couple had in common: their on-the-floor mattress.
The dispute over who was to have the mattress nearly resulted in bloodshed, for after the husband moved out of the house, he made a surprise return one day, accompanied by friends and relatives packed into pickup trucks. They stormed into the house and took away the mattress.

Willa Carther in "O Pioneers!": "There are only two or three human stories, but they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they never happened before."

I got caught up in this familiar human story. On hearing the news of the stormtrooper incident, I gave the woman and her young daughter (plus another daughter she was carrying inside her tummy at the time) a complete bedroom set.
The real point of the story is this. If a woman is going to marry someone and then divorce him, Sir Paul is a cool choice to make, provided he didn't break out singing, "I love you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeaaaahhh," on the luxurious mattress.

Photo location: Baan Hueybong, Uthaitani province