Poor old dad. He's been calling incessantly since Christmas, always asking when I am going to visit. He said it all during one of our conversations:

'It's getting lonely over here.'

He cannot be getting much satisfaction out of mum's company. She is by turns incomprehensible and harrying. Dad's constant refrain nowadays is 'I can't do a thing right around here.'

I've asked dad if he and mum have conversations and he insists that they do. The webcam seems to confirm this, but I doubt that very much communication really takes place. How can it? Mum doesn't talk properly and dad doesn't listen properly.

Dad is stuck with a wife who criticises him daily, and sometimes even tries to slap him. He can't talk things over with her, and he cannot do without her.

There are two things dad might have done, but they are both now beyond him. He might have let mum win, by not insisting on having the last word in every disagreement, by not repeating himself ad nauseam whenever he thought he had a point to make. That is one thing he might have done to sweeten the atmosphere at home and make it more congenial. From that point a new start might have been possible.

The other tack dad might have taken is a resumption of his old way of dealing with mum. He could have remained combative, stood his ground properly, dismissed mum's point of view and simply pressed on regardless with his own way of doing things. This would not have been good for mum and it would have caused great friction between dad and the rest of us, but he might at least have been able to maintain the delusion that everything was as it should be, that nothing had changed, and that mum was happy because he couldn't hear her complaining.

It is the fact that dad has mellowed, the fact that he is if anything now rather conciliatory, that has created room for argument. And it is the room for the half-hour argument, not the five minute version. It may even be room for endless argument, because mum seems to have a lifetime of resentment to unburden.