LEARNING THE ART OF LIVING WELL
As an entirely inevitable conversation unfolds about death, loss and grief this week, I wanted to share a children’s story I wrote some years ago. Many adults feel unsure about how to discuss death with children, and as a result the subject can be avoided entirely or made oblique to somehow soften the blow. I […]
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Yesterday was horrendous. While, strictly speaking, it was the first day back at (home) school after the Easter holidays, I suppose parents across the country made a decision about how stressful they were going to make it for themselves. I – perhaps predictably – went full-force. I could have eased my son back in, but […]
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I’m not going to mince my words: my son has really been getting on my nerves over the last few days. I, like so many other adults out there right now, have been attempting to balance working from home with homeschooling during what’s arguably the biggest world crisis of my lifetime. This is not normal. […]
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Lots of parents and guardians across the UK picked their children up from school for the last time in who-knows-how-long on Friday this week. The abruptness, shock, fear and confusion of it all reminded me of something else: grief. And grief, at least as I experienced it, can feel a lot like pressure. What will […]
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This is a preview of the foreword of Lost for Words, a new book created by the Life Matters task force – a coalition calling for better support for bereaved families – to mark Children’s Grief Awareness Week 2019. The book is made up of advice and insights by children across the UK, bereaved from […]
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My late wife, Desreen, was very funny. She had a completely different take on the world to anyone else I’ve ever met. For instance, after she’d given birth to our son she never really spoke negatively about wanting to lose weight or build back the stomach muscles that were cut open during her emergency caesarean. […]
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Growing up in a predominantly white, middle class town in the north of England, I never really spent much time – aside from my own childhood insecurities – thinking about how it must feel to be ‘other’. That changed nine years ago when my mixed race son was born. In the early months and years, […]
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I spent the day with one of my best friends at his new house in Cheshire on Saturday. We first met at high school and have since been through pretty much every high and low in life together. When we get together we can – and we do – talk for hours and hours. It’s […]
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I’ve been putting off watching Aquaman. Actually, that’s not quite true – I’ve been avoiding it. I don’t watch that many movies, I only binge on television every so often, and I usually decide that superhero films are bullshit before I give them a chance (save Batman, obviously). Also, after watching every single episode of […]
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Idiosyncrasies are what make individuals so interesting, but they can also make them really annoying if they are totally at odds with your own learned and acquired behaviours. I find few things more uncomfortable than over-enthusiasm and gushy praise for ordinary things – like, say, waxing lyrical about something that appears, tastes, sounds or feels […]
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Travelling with someone you love is just like living with them, only more intense. I remember being in Laos with my late wife once and realising she hadn’t said a word to me for two days. She would go through occasional periods of silence back at home in London – usually when she had done […]
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Much to my surprise, I found this next entry in the notes on my iPhone yesterday afternoon. It was entirely written by my son on the first day of our six-week trip round Italy last summer, when he was just seven years old. I’ve tweaked the grammar slightly, but otherwise this ‘part two’ is in […]
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MAN ALIVE 