Now that's what I call bad luck

Mrs W and I were catching up with a BBC programme about the Berlin Wall last night.

One of the interviewees was a starry-eyed East German communist who escaped to the West with her son simply because she wanted to pursue a love affair with the boy's father, who lived on the other side of the divide. When she arrived in the land of milk and honey, it turned out that the bloke had another wife and family on the go over there.

This was a rather unfortunate turn of events.

The obvious thing was to head straight back to her ideological homeland in the East, but that would have involved a major stretch in a Stasi prison. Her son would have been dumped in a state-run home. So she stayed put. For 22 years.

I have to admit that I fell asleep towards the end of the programme, as I'd had a glass of medicinal vino, but the Mrs filled me in on the final twist. The displaced communist finally plucked up courage to pop back home, but by now it was the late 1980s and Glasnost was sweeping the Soviet Union. As soon as she arrived, the Wall came down.

That's timing for you, eh?