August 2, 2020
My daughter is learning to drive and I’m giving her practice in my son’s car. “Don’t crash it,” he says as she flips the keys from the hook by the front door. She ignores him while I think how incredibly unhelpful his comment is to a nervous driver, especially one who is about to take […]
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July 26, 2020
It’s Saturday evening and I have no idea what I’m going to write here this week. Usually, I can look back over the past days and something emerges but today? Nothing. I scrape the ice from the bottom shelf of the constantly malfunctioning freezer with a palette knife and then the door won’t shut so, […]
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July 19, 2020
I’m walking with my sister up the narrow path which leads into the park. It’s not yet 8 am but I can feel the strength of the sun on the backs of my legs as the dog pulls to one side trying to get hold of a half-eaten apple. In the park, a few people […]
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July 12, 2020
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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July 5, 2020
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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