Dear LW - I mean the dear because I find it entirely worthy of affection that you have asked for help so articulately, and with such exquisite moderation in the face of such despair. It sounds like you're trying hard too. All I can do is add my voice to that which said leaven thought with action. Specifically - getting fit. I mean getting fit to the point of obsession.

Whenever I don't know what to do with my life - which is often - getting fit is a great place to start. For a start it necessarily IS movement. Somehow running in one place on a machine provides relief from that feeling of getting nowhere (even though the symbolic possibilities are scary don't allow it to symbolise anything - just run!). It necessarily does challenge you, it takes you to the limit of yourself - even if just for twenty minutes a day - and will create a sense of change and progress in your life.

Exercise - both cardio and weights - DAILY - for eight weeks and then refer back to your original problem. I bet you something will either have suggested itself to you by then or at least you'll be feeling much more positive and optimistic about life.

What a horrifying story, and what horrifying responses are recorded here of the 'you were doing something weird' variety.

I can only conclude that in every society there are the crazies who lead everyone on a witchhunt and then there are the crazies who love to follow them.

Yes of course there are terrorists and there are peadophiles and child abusers in our midst. However, there are far fewer than the public response to them warrants, and I very much doubt that they are about to drop off their happy snaps to a public photo lab any time soon. Of far greater danger to our children en masse are the everyday yet ubiquitous problems of poverty, inadequate health care and education, and lack of opportunity. While so much energy and time and expense goes in to following up such stupid investigations as this one the children really in need of urgent intervention will go on being neglected.

I find it offensive, as well as incredible, that the words 'child abuse' - which have a very real and terrible meaning, can be so corrupted that they can be made to include photographing ones own children naked on a camping trip.

I sympathise fully with the author and think I would have had a very similar response of depression afterwards. We recently had a very frightening experience with doctors misdiagnosing my son and I was interested to see the parallels in our response afterwards. I too have been feeling helpless and depressed and am wondering if perhaps I too should write about it. Hmm, not yet - not until it's a very faint bad memory.

I both agree with the outraged letter writer and also with the theory that no matter what the artist's values their work should stand alone. For example whether or not Shakespeare was anti semitic his work is still wonderful. Thus, I completely contradict myself, turning from one point to the other, around and around.

It IS outrageous that he is married to his stepdaughter. It breaks the most important taboo on which the safety of children is built - that their parents, and 'parental figures' - won't have sex with them. There's just no getting around it as far as I can see. He has done the most terrible thing imaginable and got away with it. I'm amazed Mia Farrow didn't completely lose her mind. I might have in the same situation.

On the other hand I continue to see his films and did so right from just after 'it' had happened - 'Manhattan Murder Mystery', one of my favourites.

Whatever the consistent position on all this is - which certainly I have never managed to find - I have always found it bizarre that an artist so concerned with morality - the holocaust, adultery, sin and wrongdoing come up again and again in his films - should be so blind when it comes to himself.

I remember his justification at the time in an interview with Time magazine was 'the heart wants what it wants'. I couldn't believe it. Of all the superficial shallow self justifications. Hitler I'm sure felt the same way.

All I can conclude is that Allen is also divided, and in his case with much more serious consequences. I am merely divided in my reaction to the man vs the artist. He is so divided that he doesn't see how his life contradicts the powerful values and concerns his own films are concerned with.

The LW has to choose: does she want to be a teacher or does she want to be an everyday person who has fallen in love with a younger man? It can't be both.

When I was at high school there were some teachers who 'had it off' with students. I still think about those teachers with revulsion and contempt, and one of them was actually an otherwise outstanding teacher.

For the sake of her professional standing and reputation - which lasts a LIFETIME in the memories of her students - the LW should get really clear that this must never happen again. Otherwise word of this affair will get around, others like it will happen over the course of her career (this was just her first year teaching, if she finds it acceptable to do this then what are the odds it won't happen again?) and soon enough her name will be mud, just like the teachers in my memory.