The Unexamined Life.

Pliny's right. There is no one who is not afraid of spells. And Socrates is right. The unexamined life is not worth living. Time to examine my life.

Have I ever used a spell to affect the life of another? Yes, if wishing is a kind of spell. Once I wished that someone would fall down the stairs. He was a prominent business man. He didn't fall down the stairs, but not for want of me wishing it very hard. Fourteen years later it was in the paper that he died. He was really old by then. I gave myself some credit, though.

Another time, I didn't like our neighbours. They were a working couple and at that time they didn't have any children. They'd invited us to dinner once and it had gone rather badly because they hadn't expected us to bring our children with us. After that, our relationship was rather frosty. It was embarrassing when we saw them in the garden. I wished that they would move away. After a few months they did move away, but only into a new house that they had built on an adjoining block. I counted this as a very weak success.

There was another neighbour though, that I wished away completely. He used to walk down along the side of his house in the mornings and stop and look into my bedroom window. Sometimes I would be at the window making use of the natural light to examine my face in a mirror. If he saw me, he would wave and grin. This was insupportable. Then one day I realised that I hadn't seen him for quite some time........