A Very Happy New Year. It certainly came around rather more swiftly than I had been expecting! We moved into our lovely new house at the beginning of December and I seem to have been emptying long-lost cardboard boxes ever since. How ever do we accumulate so much darn stuff? One of my resolutions for 2012 is to live a little more minimally, wherever possible.
Like many of us in these straitened times, I have also been extremely busy workwise. As a freelance, it is difficult to say no to any offers of work, coming through whichever channels and in September, after quite a lot of thought, I accepted an offer to blog regularly for the Mail Online website. You can find out what I have been writing about lately here.
It has been a fascinating experience, not least because it is probably the widest audience I have every written for. The site reached an astounding 79 million unique browsers in November 2011. As I explained to many of my Mail-phobic friends (and I do understand completely why it is not their paper of choice…), this was a platform I simply did not feel I could turn down.
I write for the debate/political side of the site, not the fatuous celebrity news pages, and I never write a word I don’t truly feel or believe. They simply never ask me to, as they know there is no point asking me to give a particular “Daily Mail” style steer to a piece.
To be honest, I think my masters at the Mail would prefer me to be rather more ranty and right-wing but, as they give me many of the more “society” type pieces, I have ended up with a fantastic opportunity to put my 10p worth of what I hope is good sense out into the ether, twice or three times a week.
True, I don’t get to write for my personal blogs quite as often as I would like but the huge increase in audience for the causes I try to champion has been more than worth it. The piece I wrote in November - on the need for more funds for dementia research - received a huge and moving response.
Obviously, the response isn’t always moving or, indeed, measured. When I suggested that the Duchess of Cornwall had earned public respect with her dignified support of Prince Charles, most of the commenters went crazy. Some American readers (at whom the site is very targeted) honestly seemed to believe that Camilla, alongside Prince Philip, of course, had been driving the Fiat Uno which caused Diana’s fatal crash in Paris….
I was thrilled when they chose to run my choice for Man of the Year who was my father-in-law, Charles Kirkman, who sadly lost a protracted battle with prostate cancer, after a dignified and doughty fight in July this year, aged 78.
His death may not have started any revolutions and he didn’t invent any equally revolutionary computer gadgets of which I am aware. Nevertheless, Charles lived an exemplary, perhaps somewhat traditional life, and, for me, his quiet achievements are equally significant and worthy of respect.
I was particularly grateful that Charles’ final months, though riven with the usual indignities of terminal cancer, were as comfortable and pain-free as it is possible for this ordeal to be. He had exemplary medical care and sustained support from the family and from the state, particularly at Oakhaven Hospice in Lymington, where he was able to go regularly to give my mother-in-law much-needed respite and where he died peacefully and with due dignity.
Not all of us can expect to have such a dignified death after a life equally well-lived. Last year was also marked by scores of news stories, highlighting widespread abuse and neglect of the frail and elderly, in hospitals, in care homes and horrifically, by people in whom they have placed their trust.
I started this blog in 2009 as a way of raising awareness of elder abuse and of somehow trying to ensure that more of us had a happier ending to their lives than my own father, Fred, did a few years ago.
In 2012, we hope to be launching “A Happier Ending” charity. The plan is to work, initially in primary schools, with a series of volunteer presentations, getting the kids to talk about their own grandparents and elderly relatives, in a way that helps reinforce respect for the older generation and hopefully get them to see that elder abuse is wrong - in every single way.
As you might imagine, for a new not-for-profit, hoping to work with both children and the elderly, the red tape is simply endless and there is an awful long way to go. So wish us well. I’ll keep you posted on here (and via Facebook and Twitter) but in the meantime, do have a look what I have been up to on the Mail? All the very best for a happy and healthy 2012.
