Madam, - Imagine a stranger walks into your house one day while the door is open and announces that he is a member of your family. You are shocked.
It turns out that he is not a long-lost relative but someone who is delusional. He has even changed his name to yours.
You feel threatened.
He is perfectly pleasant but absolutely adamant. He insists he is a member of your family.
You grow resentful.
You ask him to leave because you are serving up a meal for your children. But he proceeds to take a seat at the table with them and puts you in the position of either having to upset everyone by making a scene or actually feeding this interloper just to get rid of him.
If, under other circumstances, you had both spontaneously discovered a lot in common and he had waited to be asked, you might indeed have eventually had him to dinner in your home. Now, however, you are angry. How dare he unilaterally assert intimacy with you and your family! How dare he insinuate himself! How dare he manipulate you!
Maybe once you could have been friends. Now that is never likely to happen.
You call the Guards. - Yours, etc.,
Rev DAVID O'HANLON, CC, Kentstown, Co Meath.