“It was after watching a weepy made-for-TV movie about a child dying of leukemia that I finally knew how sad I was about my father. That he was wasting away, that he was being taken from me, out from under me.
I had tried rationality: everybody has to go.
I’d tried: what good’s life anyway – I want to die.
I’d tried viewing death as an injustice, an immense wrong done to every living thing. Apples falling off trees.
I’d tried general unfocused anger. I’d built a wall of it around myself, seeing everybody and everything – even spaghetti bolognese – in a ghastly new light.
I’d felt disgust, shame, indifference towards my father, and recoiled from his condition. I was so cold. I was so cold.
I’d tried self-hatred – thereby giving myself the excuse to slouch away.
And all to hide this little hurt, this little pain that was now revealed, the pain of loving someone who’s dying.
After all after all after all, he was someone I knew and loved, knew and loved, and he was dying.
Suicide was suddenly the opposite of my desire: I wanted the whole bloody world to live! Life isn’t so bad – there are redwood trees surging straight up, there’s Cornwall, there are lampshades made of straw wound sweetly round in circles, there are certain female arms by Picasso, there are men who fuck you tenderly in the dark, there are the perfect forms of cats, electric heaters available at a fair price, bel canto arias and the first few pages of Dombey & Son. What the hell, what’s wrong with it?
Only death.”

Oh, and it wasn’t easy for all of us arriving from girls’ schools to be outnumbered ten to one by these tall, hairy, hormonal creatures who veered between putting us down and pestering us to go out with them. We were just as insecure as you were….

(Hi Giles, spotted you in the Guardian the other week and thought I’d check out your blog.)