When Prince Harry spoke last week of the need for parents to ‘upgrade’ from the behaviour of the previous generation, it sounded as though he was pointing a finger at King Charles. But I wonder if he’s really aware of how much his father must have done for him when he was growing up.
After my mother’s death last month, my brother, sister and I have been going through the belongings in her flat. It’s a depressing experience, excavating 90-odd years of life, but it has also made my siblings and I reassess our mother and father as parents.
We remembered forgotten details and also discovered how involved they’d been in our childhood, when it had seemed to us they’d been preoccupied with their own busy working lives.
There are the newly discovered photographs which show our father tumbling around on the grass and playing catch with us at weekends. And there are the endless letters they wrote to various schools – either applying for places or urging an exhausted headteacher to not give up on us and give us another chance.
There’s a list my mother wrote for a new nanny, which described my daily routine including detailed food preferences, and a mind-boggling letter to a party organiser for my second birthday: ‘I would like you to supply the food, china, cake, drinks, chairs, flowers [!] and crackers for a party of twenty-five.’
We always knew they loved us, but this sad experience of emptying our childhood home has also shown us how much they had our backs and were always supporting us behind the scenes. It’s thrown a spotlight on the sort of parents we didn’t always appreciate we had.
Some tragedies can’t be prevented
Nobody should have to experience what parents Rachelle and Matthew Brettler went through, as described in the magnificent new book London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe.
In 2019 their 19-year-old son Zac is seen jumping from a riverside block of flats and found dead in the Thames. Why?
Zac, who begins life as a bright middle-class boy, becomes fixated by money and takes on the identity of the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. He hoodwinks many criminal characters from the seamy side of central London that bubbles just under the capital’s glamorous surface.
After his death, his parents attempt to discover the circumstances behind their son’s fall. Rachelle, in particular, replays how things might have turned out differently if they hadn’t made certain decisions. What if they’d sent him to a different school? What could they have done that they hadn’t?
Ultimately the Brettlers may have to accept that, as parents, we can do all the right things (as they did), but there’s never any guarantee our children won’t fall foul of something in the world beyond our control.
Scanner staff who left me scared stiff
The other day I had a scan at London’s Hammersmith Hospital to check a small cyst on my back, and found the experience needlessly frightening.
I have nothing but praise for much of my NHS treatment, but both in the state and private arenas, the bedside manner of so many healthcare practitioners is terrible. Patients arrive with a high degree of apprehension, which they rarely make any attempt to assuage. I recognise they can’t say that nothing dire will be found, but they could attempt not to make it more worrying than it already is.
As I lay on the ultrasound table, hearing the familiar click, click of the probe – the noise that had once diagnosed my breast cancer – my concern at what the silent radiographer might find intensified.
When she asked another doctor to look, I immediately harked back to the similar moment my colon cancer was found.
‘Oh no,’ I thought, terrified. ‘Not again.’ I asked what she could see, but she didn’t answer. All I needed was for her to explain they often get a second opinion. So many checks could be made more bearable with a touch of empathy and communication at the outset.
Chinos… just what the doctor ordered
On which note, all young consultants seem to wear slim-fit chinos and brown lace-up shoes these days. Why would this be? It’s something I ponder every time I’m in the waiting room.
John Lewis needs to go back to basics
Musical chairs at John Lewis, which has hired Jacqui Markham, formerly at Whistles and Topshop, as its new creative director of fashion. The previous woman in the job, Queralt Ferrer, always looked wonderful, dressing in a fashionably minimalist manner. Unfortunately, her understated chic never quite transferred to the John Lewis collections.
All too often with its in-house fashion, John Lewis is lured into producing clothes which are too tricksy and on-trend. What the store’s devotees want are perfect, updated classics, not something that’s going to shriek April 2026.
John Lewis should be the go-to place for that narrow-cut navy blazer with plain but expensive-looking gold buttons; for a black cashmere sweater with a neckline that hits the collar bone just right; for off-white jeans without fancy stitching on ugly back pockets.
I suspect most would pay a bit extra if they felt they were getting more of an investment.
It’s what M&S sometimes does well and what Uniqlo is providing with its keenly priced utilitarian designs by Clare Waight Keller.
John Lewis, though, frequently seems to miss the boat.
Beat the queues – with a booze cruise
Canny travellers are planning ways to beat the long queues at EU airports due to the new fingerprint entry system. I’d hop on a car ferry now, get the process done on arrival in Calais before the summer rush, spend the day buying wine and cheese, and then head home. Job done.
