Dead and Ill People You Probably Don’t Remember But Me and Your Father Feel Strongly We Should Tell You About Anyway

Remember Dorothy O’Hanlan? From choir when you were six? Yes. Well her cousin Louise’s husband has prostate cancer and he’s 68. So young. Terrible.

 Derek Markson finally died. You remember him? You do. He came for fish pie once in ’92.

 Jennifer Holmes’ mum, Elizabeth, well she was at school in Scotland with this lovely woman Carolyn, hill-walker, totally fluent in Mandarin, had terrible pain in her ears, went to get them syringed, tumours.

 So Geoffrey Cohen’s wife has Parkinsons now, awful . Not the first one. No. She was the one who came to your Bat Mitzvah, yes, no, not her. The second one. You know I don’t know what happened to the first one. I must find out.

 Thinking of divorces - wait, hang on, am I telling her or are you? Fine then – cousin Andrew had this funny looking mole and he went to get it checked out, -did you ever get that funny thing on your shoulder looked at, you must – anyway the mole was absolutely fine, but when he was in the waiting room he bumped into Jillian Redway, remember her, Sebastian’s mum, or maybe it was your brother who was friends with Sebastian, no it was you because she told you off that time for being in the wrong toilet because of your short hair, anyway she has IBS. Like you.

 And poor Peter, no it wasn’t COVID, your father is saying it was COVID, it wasn’t COVID. Peter Bloch. You do remember him. We went to his beach-hut near Worthing on a bank holiday. No he wasn't there, he lent it us. It wasn’t COVID. For heaven’s sake.

 Did you ever write and thank Jean for that card? Because she’s dead now.

 Also, I did mean to tell you last year I was in a terrible bus-related accident and I was in A & E for three weeks and I had all my blood replaced and most of my bones reset, it was that time when I said I was busy finally decluttering the house and my whatsapp messaging went a bit formal because your father had taken over and we didn’t want to worry you but I’m fine now so there we are. So did mention to you about Judy Lattner? Dreadful.