The significance - to me - of Veuve Clicquot

I grow more and more like my mum, particularly in the way I tell the same story over and over and forget that I've told it. So my sister probably had heard this story before she gave me a bottle of 2008 vintage Veuve.

I once bought a bottle of the lovely French champagne and promised myself that as soon as I learnt of the death of a certain past associate, then I'll pop the cork immediately wherever I was.

There was no reason to believe this past associate was going to die anytime soon - I just relished the idea.

The significance of this is that it helped me recognise that hate imprisons a person. It's like swallowing poison and hoping that the other person dies from it.

So the significance is the freedom that I received a few years later when I casually popped the cork with some students in a celebration of their study.

That horrid nemisis is as alive and as well as ever although - I expect - living their own hell on the inside. However I too am alive and well, as well as being free.