My daughter is feeding ice cream to her grandmother, now too weak to feed herself. “It’s hard to see the people who looked after us not able to look after themselves,” I say. She agrees, but she’s happy to do it. It reminds me of having to help my father get out of the bath […]
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For the thirteen years since the death of my mother a huge collection of 35mm photographic slides have been sitting in the garage on a shelf, waiting for me. Having cleared out her house after she died, a task which took me and my two siblings the best part of a year, I couldn’t face […]
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It’s 5 am, still too hot for sleep, and I find myself wide awake hearing the patter of welcome raindrops falling against the window. I feel both grateful for a respite from the heat and a pang of regret that I left the washing out all night. I get up, go out into the garden, […]
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Last weekend my son sustained head trauma. Someone punched him so hard it broke his mastoid and, as he fell he hit and cut his head. For two days there was blood coming from his ear, he couldn’t keep a glass of water down, and he was so dizzy he couldn’t get himself off the […]
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“What do you think of the statues being taken down?” I ask my children while we’re doing the washing up. “I don’t know why we have statues at all,” says my daughter. “It’s hard to know where to draw the line. I guess nobody is all bad,” I say. My son is straight back with, […]
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It’s time for dinner as my daughter arrives in the kitchen. “Can you empty the dishwasher while we’re plating up?” I ask, not sure what response I’ll get because she looks as if she’s just woken up. In case I was in any doubt she prefaces any further activity with, “I’m tired.” Despite her weariness […]
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On a balmy late spring evening we’re eating outside huddled next to the wafts of jasmine bloom providing a flourish to the end of the day. My daughter has spent all day indoors revising for exams. But instead of taking the nervous walk into cavernous halls on campus, she’ll be sitting in her room in […]
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I was on a workshop once in the beautiful highlands of Scotland when Boo Hewerdine said that the best piece of songwriting advice he was ever given was by a guy in Nashville who had told him, “The longer you hold a chord, the bigger it sounds”. I’ve told numerous people since the beginning of […]
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I’ve been watching all the episodes of “Detectorists” again, a comedy series ostensibly about nothing more than two friends with a passion for metal detecting but ultimately a lovely story about male relationships. This might be the third time I’ve watched it from start to finish and, nearing the very last episode, I start to […]
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I’ve slipped easily into a new routine over the past weeks. This is not a surprise because I live simply at the best of times so being able to hear the birds without interruption in the morning and having my children around a lot more is hardly a burden. I feel extremely grateful that I […]
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