Low life
Marketa stands on one side of me, Catriona on the other. Marketa is Czech and my carer. Catriona is my…
Low life
Monday morning. In comes Frank. Frank is a carer in his late fifties. He comes daily to wash me. Still…
Low life
It took five firemen or pompiers to lift me out of bed, carry me down three narrow flights of stairs…
Low life
The morning after we were wedded, I went to hospital in Marseille. The oncologist wanted to assess the pain level…
Low life
It’s been all go. After breakfast Treena brought a basin of warm water, a bar of soap and a face…
Low life
‘They say they can’t do it tomorrow. The papers haven’t come.’ Catriona, just back from the village, was shouting up…
Low life
I can see why rock stars and other impetuous celebrity types accidentally top themselves with drug cocktails. When you are…
Low life
Since Christmas I’ve been sending off these columns with the anxious thought that perhaps I’m overdoing the dying bit and…
Kicking a football has been one of the joys of my life
Two nights running I was incontinent of urine and woke up with warmly weighted pyjama bottoms. Former nurse Catriona didn’t…
Low life
Feeling lucky always, I assumed that chemotherapy would be the piece of cake that some had predicted for me. They…
Low life
I woke up in the wake-up room (salle de réveil). The clock on the wall said half past ten. I’d…
Low life
Standing at the door was a hospital porter. He was resting an elbow on the back of a heavily padded…
My deliriously happy primary school days
I remember my first day at South Benfleet County Primary School with rare clarity. My mother left me at the…
Low life
Throughout the flat, post-Christmas limbo I lay languishing after another dollop of chemotherapy and read my Christmas present, Thomas Mann’s…
Low life
Then dear old Dolly drove down from Essex to pay her respects. It was a brave effort because she hasn’t…
Low life
Sometimes, when the weather is fine, Treena calls up the stairs: ‘Why don’t you sit out on the terrace and…
Low life
The sunny, growing month of November is the British expat’s Provençal dividend. Every morning the meridional sunshine comes in through…
Low life
Catriona went to England and Scotland for ten days. The last thing she said to the lean and slippered pantaloon…
Low life
A dear friend came to stay for two nights. Could I be persuaded, wondered he and Catriona, on the first…
Low life
After commuting to Marseille for nine days of radiotherapy, I spent the week alone in the cave, in bed, in…
Low life
The day British media commentators were christening Rishi’s coronation as Britain’s ‘Obama moment’, French ones were calling the particularly horrible…
Low life
The grandsons are putting two and two together. Grandad is always lying down and groaning when they video call and…
