Just a short walk down the road from our cottage in France there is a most beautiful beach. It stretches in a long curve as far as the eye can see and at low tide it takes 10 minutes simply to get to the sea for a paddle. The sand is a fine white-yellow and…
Harvest home
The last days of the summer holidays were frenetic. Jobs put off from back in July had to be done. The saplings needed stouter stakes to help them withstand the ferocious winter winds – this took one morning. The overlong reeds in the field needed cutting down – another morning. There was the usual cleaning…
Last words
By their very nature the last words people utter carry a very special significance. To those who are close, they can bring solace or can engender guilt and anxiety, but whichever, they are likely to linger indefinitely. They somehow encapsulate our memories of the dead person, even becoming a sort of personification. And there are…
A difficult teenager
It was going to be a difficult week – or so I was told. Our niece, now 16, was coming to stay with us in France. It involved quite a complicated journey and beforehand there were endless texts and phone calls from her Dad (her parents are divorced) to check everything was allright. Finally I…
Never too old
Graham Dukes can still find new things to grumble about. Yes, I have reached my fourscore years and a little more. And no, most of the time I do not feel old. But there was one moment…. It happened in Kabul, of all places. I was consulting, as a member of a health team, and…
The parable of the humble shoe lace
Some things are important more for what they represent than for what they are, and for me one such is the humble shoelace. These long, thin and usually featureless strands have been threaded through shoe eyelets for over a thousand years and have changed little. There has been competition - buckles, elastic, zips, plastic and…
Careless talk
Last week the phone rang. It was my very worried friend Ron seeking advice. He told me how he had just learned that his elderly mother had developed a life threatening medical condition. For many years she had been taking a blood-thinning drug following a heart operation. Earlier that evening Nurse X had collared Ron…
Home sweet home
Not for the first time our house has been invaded. I am not talking about uninvited mice or ants but about invited builders. It started at the end of March and was to finish in 8 weeks. With all our careful planning this was going to be bearable but, in reality, it has been the…