...and those who were sometimes 'more dead than alive'....hmmm...and that reminds me....I can remember heather laughing about how my father had taken great pains to find Christmas trees that were 'alive'...i.e. those without boiled roots...he was then to plant two of them, at the bottom of 14 st bernards garden....one died and the other was half-dead....by the time that my parents were to sell up and leave....heather was to chuckle that it was a metaphor for ingabot/Helen and ed gyde....go figure: