People were forever having nervous breakdowns in Wolverhampton in the 1980s. A geography teacher would fail to turn up for spring term and it would be put down to a nervous breakdown. A father of five down the street would disappear and it would be explained with the silent mouthing of similar words. I never really understood what it meant. If anything, I imagined the person concerned lying in bed and groaning plaintively: a combination of what cars did when they “broke down” and what Jane Austen characters did when they…

Source: The Times December 01, 2016 17:04 UTC