Low life

The pros and cons of kissing

6 May 2023 9:00 am

Marketa stands on one side of me, Catriona on the other. Marketa is Czech and my carer. Catriona is my…

My morphine machine has broken

29 April 2023 9:00 am

Monday morning. In comes Frank. Frank is a carer in his late fifties. He comes daily to wash me. Still…

What I’d give for a glass of water

22 April 2023 9:00 am

It took five firemen or pompiers to lift me out of bed, carry me down three narrow flights of stairs…

Low life

15 April 2023 9:00 am

The joy of a hospital honeymoon

1 April 2023 9:00 am

The morning after we were wedded, I went to hospital in Marseille. The oncologist wanted to assess the pain level…

The joy of my wedding day

25 March 2023 9:00 am

It’s been all go. After breakfast Treena brought a basin of warm water, a bar of soap and a face…

Paper? Marriage? Ours? Ceremony?

18 March 2023 9:00 am

‘They say they can’t do it tomorrow. The papers haven’t come.’ Catriona, just back from the village, was shouting up…

My life in a lunatic asylum

11 March 2023 9:00 am

I can see why rock stars and other impetuous celebrity types accidentally top themselves with drug cocktails. When you are…

My night pot is a thing of beauty

4 March 2023 9:00 am

Since Christmas I’ve been sending off these columns with the anxious thought that perhaps I’m overdoing the dying bit and…

Low life

25 February 2023 9:00 am

Kicking a football has been one of the joys of my life

18 February 2023 9:00 am

Two nights running I was incontinent of urine and woke up with warmly weighted pyjama bottoms. Former nurse Catriona didn’t…

Low life

11 February 2023 9:00 am

The medicinal qualities of the perfect joint

4 February 2023 9:00 am

Feeling lucky always, I assumed that chemotherapy would be the piece of cake that some had predicted for me. They…

The joy of French hospital food

28 January 2023 9:00 am

I woke up in the wake-up room (salle de réveil). The clock on the wall said half past ten. I’d…

The atmosphere of the surgical unit was that of a cocktail party half an hour in

18 January 2023 10:00 pm

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

14 January 2023 9:00 am

I remember my first day at South Benfleet County Primary School with rare clarity. My mother left me at the…

The joy of Thomas Mann’s diabolism

7 January 2023 9:00 am

Throughout the flat, post-Christmas limbo I lay languishing after another dollop of chemotherapy and read my Christmas present, Thomas Mann’s…

The naked truth about cannabis farming

17 December 2022 9:00 am

Then dear old Dolly drove down from Essex to pay her respects. It was a brave effort because she hasn’t…

The joy of Spectator readers’ letters

10 December 2022 9:00 am

Sometimes, when the weather is fine, Treena calls up the stairs: ‘Why don’t you sit out on the terrace and…

My Willie Thorne moment

26 November 2022 9:00 am

The sunny, growing month of November is the British expat’s Provençal dividend. Every morning the meridional sunshine comes in through…

How to make the perfect fry-up

19 November 2022 9:00 am

Catriona went to England and Scotland for ten days. The last thing she said to the lean and slippered pantaloon…

I dropped a morphine capsule in my Moscow Mule

12 November 2022 9:00 am

A dear friend came to stay for two nights. Could I be persuaded, wondered he and Catriona, on the first…

My week alone in a mess of morphine foils

5 November 2022 9:00 am

After commuting to Marseille for nine days of radiotherapy, I spent the week alone in the cave, in bed, in…

O frabjous day! My new tumour is just my old prostate friend

29 October 2022 9:00 am

The day British media commentators were christening Rishi’s coronation as Britain’s ‘Obama moment’, French ones were calling the particularly horrible…

My grandsons have sensed weakness – and it’s costing me

22 October 2022 9:00 am

The grandsons are putting two and two together. Grandad is always lying down and groaning when they video call and…