Me and Michel Chapter One

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home  Matsuo Bashō I am flying to Biarritz in the south of France with my two grown up daughters, where we’ll holiday together for two weeks on a campsite. Then, when they’ve gone, the plan is I will cycle the thousand kilometres home again – …

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episode twenty, or episode one? Either way, a modern odyssey begins..!

Episode Twenty: A Modern Odyssey begins… We’re told everything is in constant flux, that change is everywhere, and that nobody stays in one place anymore…some truth to that, but there are signposts to guide us on the journey from one place to another, and from one story to another… This brief episode is such a …

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episode nineteen: the sea, the sea

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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episode eighteen: the hotel du cap

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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episode seventeen: the wanderer returns

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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episode sixteen: a hopeful hashtag

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 …

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episode fifteen: happy grow bags

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 …

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episode fourteen: jelly wobbles

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 …

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episode thirteen: arrivals and departures

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 …

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episode twelve: I can see clearly now

…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 …

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