I would like to tell you the tale of my 51-year old tortoise who was becoming increasingly manic, anorexic, and obsessive about a cast iron drainpipe and needed a Decision Making Repatterning...

44 years ago, when I was 7, I begged a distant relative to buy me a couple of lizards, just like the ones he had, that I had coveted. Instead, he returned from the pet shop with a slightly mobile brown paper bag. I was bitterly disappointed to find it was only a dull Greek tortoise. This couldn't scuttle up my arm, as I had dreamed!

My Father, with intended irony, called it Terry-Ogian-Whizz-Bang, and as she grew, used Terry-O-W-B, (and a couple of guinea pigs) as an excuse not to spend too much time on the vegetable and strawberry bed. He bought me an even duller African tortoise, as my Mother suggested, "to keep Terry company". They barely acknowledged each other, though of an evening Terry always got back into their box of straw first, and used Harry-Ogian-Bang-Whizz, bringing up the rear, as a kind of draught excluder.

This may be why Dad surmised that Terry was the female, and Harry, the tortoise-pecked, long-suffering male. There were no visible landmarks to indicate otherwise. And it was probably why, after the Great Winter of '63, Dad sadly found the shell and liquid goo of Harry-Ogian-Bang-Whizz, while Terry staunchly survived.

Long after I'd left home, Mum and Dad moved to a gardenless maisonette. They brought Terry from sunny southern Surrey to the colder climate of north east Lincolnshire, and relinquished, with relief, their role of tortoise-carers. They also brought Terry's long suffering friend - the heavy top bracket of a cast iron drainpipe. When Terry had started unnervingly chasing anyone wearing brown shoes and biting them, it became obvious that Terry was not a shrewish she-harridan, but a full hot-blooded male, and the drainpipe - his indispensable subservient mate.

The cold easterly winds and shorter summers of the East Midlands were not ideal for a Greek tortoise. He was slow to warm up in the later Springs, and had less time to lay down fat for hibernation. In the warm winters of '89 and '90, when bees sipped nectar from the sweet-scented helleborus, the Christmas flowering rose, I caught Terry galloping down the drive, having shoved his way out of his box.

He adapted, despite the confusing climate changes but his personality became increasingly manic; lying in wait beneath the ladder, defying the two tortoises on the feet of our Roofer (luckily familiar with the eccentricities of tortoises), to come down and fight! He was eating quite well, and able to balance the necessities of life - Food and Sex. He knew the difference between a sexy female drainpipe and the hand, foot or flip-flop that fed him.

In the last few years, with no time to stop and eat, he had become almost psychotic, sex-mad, and anorexic, viciously biting fingers, and toes rather than the proffered delicacies. He'd gallop after us so fast, he would fall over himself, or circle on the spot, sniffing like a miniature tyrannosaurus on the prowl for rival males or ripe females when we tried to hide behind him. Even our placid middle-aged cat became the subject of unwelcome attention.

The only way to make him slow down was to lead him to his docile drainpipe, where he'd nod and circle, give her gentle love-bites, biff her about a bit, turn her over and mount, standing on tippy-claws, mouth wide, pink little tongue at a stretch. Even from indoors we could hear the marathon clunking of shell on iron, then the rasping grunts as he thrust for hours like a true stud. Occasionally he would get so carried away, we'd find him on his back, furiously trying to get to get a claw hold to right himself. In the August heat of recent summers, he was far too frenetic to feed.

Reiki slowed him down enough to eat the odd morsel, but I was worried it might not be enough to survive hibernation. I sensed he needed real tortoise companionship, but he would be far too aggressive for polite chelonia society.

We started the Decision Making Repatterning, with Terry impotently circling his drainpipe close by, under the shade of the apple trees, and finished it the next morning. There was some scoffing from relatives, but my faith in the Holographic Repatterning Process was rewarded.

Terry's problem was: 'I don't know what I want. I can't stop to eat. I'm always on the alert for rivals'. Instead, he wanted to reproduce, but there was brain non-coherence in the front and back areas. His decision making orientation: 'I know when and how much to eat and drink, when to be active and when to be still, the right time to hibernate and the right time to emerge, to know what is life-giving and sustaining food and to differentiate between true tortoise food, and fingers, feet and shoes, so I have energy to be appropriately active and to survive even the warmest winters'.

There were specific checks on the senses of smell, taste, right adrenal and right testis areas. The earlier experience, age 7, involved his captors: 'I was bundled up and stacked with other tortoises and flown to a cold climate'. His negative belief: "I can't stop to think". The creative phase of decision-making concluded: 'I will be happy and enjoy my drainpipe, the sunshine, rain, food and company with my people'.

The Pause revealed: 'I feel lonely, lacking stimuli, but if I calm down, I will accept and appreciate what I have and make the most of it. At the moment I am too aggressive to mix with other tortoises - they are a distant memory. But if I calm down, I might be able to be sociable again, and maybe my People might stay with me more'. To implement the decision, Terry reasoned he had the all the resources, and his best timing is: 'natural daylight, seasons and weather because of my circadian(!!!) rhythms'. At last he realised that rushing about maniacally did not serve his interests.

The acupressure point was the right Metal element on the Kidney meridian with a tuning fork, proxying on the human chart for the equivalent tortoise point. The MCC was the deep release breath, visualising green and releasing pain and tension from the right testis and adrenal gland.

Terry is eating again. He hasn't bitten anyone in 3 years, though my blue flip-flops occasionally incense him. He follows us calmly, browsing on the weeds on the lawn. He gently caresses my feet with his neck and seems to appreciate our company. His sexual technique has much more finesse, and I am sure that, were she not a drainpipe we might be eggspecting some happy events. Now he is preparing for hibernation.