In January 2020, my 15-year-old son Patrick went to a football game and never came home. A Swindon Town fan, he’d gone to watch Tottenham, because he could. He collapsed seeking the last train out of Marylebone and died, suddenly, unexpectedly, and still, without cause. Two weeks later, my dad, suffering with cancer and with his sense of purpose desperately unravelled, gently died too.
Eventually, I wrote a book, and its evolution was unexpected and a little unconventional. I wrote, amid utter grief and after a couple of years, ‘Red Balloons – A Father, A Son, A Memoir’ took tentative flight, and gently spread its wings. It was a beautiful journey and only now am I able to look back and reflect on why and maybe how I wrote it.…
