Low life
The pros and cons of kissing
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
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
It took five firemen or pompiers to lift me out of bed, carry me down three narrow flights of stairs…
The joy of a hospital honeymoon
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
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?
‘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
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
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…
The medicinal qualities of the perfect joint
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
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
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…
The joy of Thomas Mann’s diabolism
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The grandsons are putting two and two together. Grandad is always lying down and groaning when they video call and…
