An excerpt from Love and Care, the book…where you can read about a very special a beach walk with my dad… ‘Beautiful,’ says Kate Mosse of the book. ‘Candid and funny,’ says Raynor Winn. Tony Parsons: ‘A superbly honest memoir about the unbreakable bonds of family.’ The summer seems to have come and almost gone …

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The Hotel du Cap…a love story My book, Love and Care is out now…here you can read how a glorious fool was so obsessed with what love is and why we love, that he very nearly made a film… I once worked with a moderately famous actress who said to me, “It’s not so much …

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After an absence of some months, the wanderer returns with news…of a book…you can find out more by listening…       I’ve been a long way away, and for quite a while. I’ll explain why later, and offer an apology, but first, I’d like to shuggle back into the podcast chair in the little …

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These are unhappy times, but is there any comfort to be found? The last place we might think to look would be a shoot ’em up spaghetti western, but these are also strange times… The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, as many millions of people around the planet know, is the title of a …

Continue reading "episode sixteen: a hopeful hashtag"

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season three greetings, new beginnings despite Coronavirus, because Spring too is in the air…     Looking back, it’s hard to understand why the experience took so much out of me. After all, I was not the patient. We’d been surrounded by good intentions and ten days after Mum was admitted to hospital, I was …

Continue reading "episode fifteen: happy grow bags"

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in which jelly, once a special treat for her grand daughters, becomes a threat to mum’s life… It was a day like any other. That’s how it felt when I got up around six-thirty and showered and started to get the medications ready. I had no idea that by the evening I would be alone …

Continue reading "episode fourteen: jelly wobbles"

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in which we celebrate an arrival and a departure, comings and goings, death and  a new life…   It’s all good. I’m waiting at the airport for my sister Karen to arrive from Vancouver, just in time for the celebration of life at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. It’s a flying visit literally, as she used …

Continue reading "episode thirteen: arrivals and departures"

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…in which I find time to think about my own future and take the long view on what I might want when the time comes…   It’s the last care call of the day. This is Zara arriving. She’s from Slovakia. She’s been a carer for four years, she’s married to a Brit and has …

Continue reading "episode twelve: I can see clearly now"

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…in which my guru shows me how to ‘live in the now’ and I offer thanks by way of a bowl of those cheesy puff-things and an ice cold drink as the sun sinks low in the sky… Years ago, I became interested in the notion of memory, chiefly because my own is so bad. …

Continue reading "episode eleven: gin and tonic with a zen master"

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…in which I recount a typical day, look back on those three dates I managed to squeeze in before mum’s escape from the care home and Maisie the dog pays a visit, along with daughters and ex-wife…   Episode ten, The Longest Day…but before I begin, let me just say the clue is in the …

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