I sympathise. Bad neighbours have wrecked my life from time to time. Now I live on a corner block across the road from the park, and at least twice a day I savour the peace and the silence.

However there may not actually be a problem. Someone looking to buy your place may not react to the dude the way you do - because you have 'history' with him, they don't. Believe it or not you have may still get a great price for your place. I think you should put it on the market and see who bites and what they offer. If someone asks you be honest about the neighbourhood. It's great - and there is a colourful character living next door who surely can't last long.

This happened with me when we were renting out our flat last year. I warned the tenants about the noisy neighbours upstairs - but subsequently they haven't had a problem with them. Part of it was I think that I had become hypersensitive over the years. Part of it was that they moved out soon after. Time is the great tenant-mover-onerer.

I second the suggestion of phoning the landlord every time, as well as the council and the police. 'Just thought you should know'. It really works. Pyschologically for you as well as practically. Dump your concerns on the landlord's head.

Whatever you do don't let it get personal between you and the dude. Lie low. He's the one with time and excess rage on his hands and you don't want him to perceive you as his problem.

Based on my own experience I think the LW should do the following:

1. Hang on - a contented husband doing a job he loves will feel great in a few years time. You'll look back on your self defining act of supporting him to do this with pride. Right now is the hard part when you're halfway across the river and not sure why you're doing it.

2. Develop your self esteem. Do you like how you look? for eg Are you fit?

3. Express and develop your passions and enthusiasms. Share them with others. The more you get into you the less worried you'll be by other people. You'll be seen and recognised by them more, as well. They won't be able to mistake you for someone who lives for a big car and you won't be able to so easily change all the rules on yourself and think that's what you live for either.

4. Love what you have. Cherish your apartment. Make it yours. Cherish your child free time - there's a lot more opportunity for spontaneity and freedom when you don't have a child.

5. Plan to fulfil a dream in the medium term (within the next five years). A trip to Europe for example or learning how to do something.

6. Don't buy the bullshit. Having a child is hard and filled with insecurity and anxiety as well as joy and life. Having a house - the same. No ones life is endlessly perfect and shiny and it's only when you're beating up on yourself that you believe that.

From the way you talk about having a child or a house it sounds like you have perhaps lost the script to your own life and so you're following someone else's. And failing of course as you always end up doing if you're not on your own authentic path. Before you do anything so irrevocable you need to find your own sense of self again.

The worldly rewards of writing are usually not commensurate with the effort put in. There are already too many writers in that there just isn't enough demand for them all to be published and encouraged as they may often deserve to be. Most people spend a lot more time watching TV than they do reading and movies are much more glamorised by the world than books. So. My question to you is: why on earth would you write?

If you don't have to, then don't. Maybe you proved yourself to those who counted by publishing that first book. Maybe you feel like you were lucky to get that one published and you want to quit while you're still one for one. Whatever the reason is - enjoy your freedom. Some day you may feel the urge again and then your life will be more complicated while you try to juggle family and day job in order to write. For now, just breathe easy and relax.

When you're that talented and keep knocking them out of the park the way he does, there's no way he won't be up there with a gold statuette, sometime in the next thirty years.

Helen Mirren inspiringly fuckable? She is! And come on everyone who is offended, get real: one of the prime qualities a leading movie star must have is fuckability. Or do you honestly think that it's talent alone that puts them into 'leading' category, as opposed to your definitively less fuckable 'character actor'. Falling in love with the hero or heroine of the movie is often what it's all about. If that doesn't happen for you then the movie won't work for you.