Any Day Now

You’d never know it from my home page, but I have a new book out next week. LIFE ACCORDING TO LUBKA feels like it’s been a long time arriving. First there was the year I lay fallow after my publishers declined to offer me another contract. It happens. Fate smacks you round the head with a wet towel and…

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The Night Nurse Reports

We’re now into Week 3 of Mr F’s latest hospital adventure, three weeks in which I’ve learned to make it up as I go along. Particularly the nights. I started off sleeping in my own bed, with the phone by my pillow. Not good. Forty miles is too far away when hell breaks loose. So…

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Home Alone

I know I sometimes beef about this city: when I can’t get my jacket out of Maximum Security Dry Cleaning because the owner has gone on vacation for three weeks; when it takes me an entire day to untangle one thread of Italian red tape. Last night I had a reminder of how good life is…

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When Nice Things Happen

It’s two years, almost to the day, since I met Raia. She was one drop in the flood of women who come to Italy from Eastern Europe looking for work and I was interviewing for a live-in carer for my mother. Raia got the job, and for the remaining six weeks of my mother’s life she cared for her…

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