Twins: Ten Thousand Letters To My Children

Ahead of Sophie lies a promising career as a professional mourner. Culturally, what could be more different to our retentive way of dealing with loss. For every stifled sob we suppress, some cultures celebrate the passing with a dose of energetic hysteria. A gaggle of inconsolables weave and ululate about the coffin for a set turn and then retreat to the back of the cortege for a rest, leaving fresher lungs to lead the grief stricken peloton. Apparently its a thing! My daughter has a precocious talent for switching on the waterworks and can readily transform from sublime contentment to streaming eyed, runny nosed distress in the time it takes me to say no to an ice cream, a shoulder ride or impose any other intolerable cruelty. Sadly, we (and by we, I do of course mean me) have let this go unchecked and too late has the realisation dawned that Sophie has secretly been weaponising her tear ducts. Our normal routine involves managing a predictable routine of low level res...

There was a time when a jaunt to Paris required an appointment with the ruff tailor, overtime for the man servant and a change of horses every twenty miles. Since suspension was in its rudimentary phase, this journey was best avoided by anyone not partial to a week astride an over excited pogo stick. In those days the Channel's choppy greyness only offered nauseous, wind assisted flotation as a means of passage; modernity has given us the added choice of going over it or more recently, under it. The plane is undeniably quicker but even when you do get moving it is still a gamble. Keeping your feet on the ground largely avoids the check-in roulette, the baggage tombola and the scratch card security, all of which are prone to leaving you expensively disappointed and quite probably sick to the stomach. After all, why else would they call it a Terminal? The ferry has its charms, as our trip to Ile de Re in May demonstrated, but when time is limited, those precious hours seem b...