I think that my mum's illness, its sly and stealthy onset so that at first we could believe what she told us - I'm just having a bad day - coincided with the collapse of her role as mother.

Not entirely, of course, the job is never taken away entirely: once a mom, always a mom. Read More

My son was eighteen last week.

My eldest daughter begins at boarding school next week.

Small pieces of me are breaking away; splinters of myself.

My mother remembers the feeling well. The loud fluttering of young wings that faded to silence when we'd all gone. Gone to school. To college. Read More

Somebody I know, somebody I know well, somebody quite close to me, said, ‘You know: you shouldn't write about your mother's illness the way you do; you shouldn't do your dirty laundry in public'.

Dirty laundry? Dirty laundry! My Mum?

Oh please.

Everybody's got family skeletons. Read More

That's what it does to you sometimes.

Loneliness.

It messes with your head.

And that's what I am. Often. Lonely. An isolation borne of my geography. Read More