Inspired by an evening of volunteering last week for Under One Sky, a charity which provides essentials, amongst other things, for those living on the street, I decided to write something… Hackney, mid-week, and it is a cold and wet evening there, as night beckons and winter looms, full of foreboding for those that must …
Estranged from my own heart, it was my little sister, Debs, who first introduced me to him, as his voice uttered, “If we could have hated ourselves into becoming better people, it would have worked by now.” An American, raised in the rough end of New Haven, and now living in San Francisco, Vinny Ferraro …
I long for her now. She knows who she is— the one who stepped out of snow and early dusk, on that last day of autumn, and found me— half-buried beneath my own weather, longing for a love that had always turned its face away. With her, that afternoon, the air remembered itself. My lungs …
Culture is not unique to humans, even though they use this notion to mark themselves out as superior to us, their ape cousins. Culture is the stamp of humanity, they proclaim, animals do not possess it – they have the unfortunate habit of forgetting that they too are animals – and there is no tribe …
The most effective and moving film on climate change to date, from someone who has witnessed it firsthand over the past ninety-three years. We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, the anthropocene extinction, which we, human beings, are responsible for. Things are dire. I am terrified for future generations. If we carry …
A seemingly magical thing happened in late 2016. I received a phone call, out of the blue, from a dear old friend, Sara Caplan, who said, quite simply, “Nick, I think I can help.” Over two years earlier, in June 2014, my young sons Theo and Oskar had been diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a …
It was World Duchenne Day on 7 September. Much happens in the community, as parents around the world continue to strive for a significant treatment or cure for their sons: there is nothing quite like the motivation of a parent watching their child grow weaker by the day. We will do anything for our children, …
I am not as I was. I am a changed man. Life has changed me. Duchenne has changed me. I, we, will beat the fucker, that is the fatal disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which Theo, Oskar and thousands of other boys worldwide have, and which will kill them. The diagnosis gives us parents, of Duchenne boys, …
I did not think it would be this soon, just after his fifth birthday, that his legs would finally fail him. Bocketts Farm in Fetcham, Surrey, Saturday morning, and Theo stumbles over to me from the softplay on his toes, legs quivering below the knees. “I cannot walk, daddy! My legs hurt.” With these words, …
This Sunday 26th June is Blue Hair Day, a brilliant annual flagship campaign run by Harrison’s Fund cooked up by a bunch of big-hearted mums to raise awareness and funds for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The idea to go blue for the day, sport a silly wig and get involved in the Duchenne cause first came …