Americans have become so attached to the idea of convenience that they will put up with almost any inconvenience to achieve it It's crazy, but there you are. It would have been much quicker if the driver had parked like us, and gone in and got his food himself, but he would never have thought that way because the drive-through window is supposed to be speedier and more convenient.You see my point, of course. Now, a drive-through window is not, despite its promising name, a window you drive through, but a window you drive up to and collect your food from, having placed your order over a speakerphone along the way; the idea is to provide quick takeaway food for those in a hurry. We parked, went in, ordered and ate, and came out again, all in about 10 minutes. As we departed, I noticed that a white pickup truck that had been last in the queue when we arrived was still four or five cars back from collecting its food. I was thinking about this the other day (I'm always thinking, you know - it's amazing) when I took my younger children to a Burger King for lunch, and there was a line of about a dozen cars at the drive-through window. OUR SUBJECT today is convenience in America, and how the more convenient things supposedly get, the more inconvenient they in fact become. If he had had someone he trusted to keep an eye on him and maybe some drugs such as lithium, he might still be alive today.Interviews by Daisy Price`Virginia Woolf: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by Peter Dally (Robson Books) is out now.

`Remembered Dreams' by Emma Dally (Little, Brown) is due in October. Maybe Simon would still be alive if something had been done earlier on. He needed a strong support with whom he could be controlled, to stop his excessive and absurd ideas. We had a close relationship, and spent evenings playing chess together. But I felt as if I should have intervened and acted much sooner than I did. I'm much more aware of her life and how creatively she has organised it compared to Simon, who had such great ability, but was unable to use it constructively.Simon's death made me feel partly guilty I hadn't been what you might call a good father.

I still feel aggrieved that Simon's psychiatrist wasn't the right man for him. It was silly of me to choose him; a parent is never the right person to do that.It sounds dreadful to say, but my relationship with Emma improved after Simon's death. I became much closer to her and more aware of her as a personality in her own right We don't have flaming rows any more. In retrospect, I can see he had made up his mind to kill himself. He had become much happier - this is always a worrying sign in a manic depressive.It's very common for relatives to put their grief and blame on someone else.

At the time, I was splitting up with my wife and saw Simon's behaviour as a reaction to this.The day that Simon killed himself, all the kids were meant to be coming to supper with me I had been feeling very worried about Simon for a while. It's difficult to see behaviour in your own family; you see things as reactions to what you are doing yourself. It was only when he had to leave his job as a result of his outrageous manic behaviour that I started to see it in terms of an illness.When his behaviour changed, I really didn't do anything If he had been a patient it would have been so simple. They both went to Oxford and both went into publishing.Even while Simon was at Oxford, I noticed he got pretty depressed But I saw it as a reaction to life's problems. They had similar minds and would fly up and down in mood, but Simon's mood swings were obviously much greater.