Y a-t-il un seuil de la mort? Le nouveau film d’Almodovar au sujet de la fin de vie m’a rappelé un texte écrit en réponse à cette question suite à la dernière fois que j’ai vue ma mère encore en vie. Il s’agit d’un sacré voyage qui nous montre ce qui se passe lorsqu’on passe de la métaphore à la réalité. Je vais essayer de le partager.

Is there a door to death? Seeing the new Almodovar film about assisted dying sent me back to something I wrote down in answer to this question after seeing my mother for the last time. Quite a journey, but one which shows what happens when metaphors get real. Let me try and explain.

I learnt to read at school. At first, that meant reading out loud while somebody listened. It was a public experience. This oralizing from words on a page felt strange but exciting, as if something was passing through me from the page to the sounds I uttered. It was like being part of something new. Although the ultimate goal would be to read silently, Mr Harding, a primary school teacher, reminded us that we could still sometimes break that rule.

I was around the age I am in the photograph illustrating this piece when it slipped out casually in a family conversation that my father had had a elder brother called Gerald and I was named after him. That was just the beginning.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is required reading for Mrs Fullerton’s Literature class. We have three weeks. But I have been resisting the prospect of reading real books for a while now. On the Saturday morning of the final weekend of the three-week reading period, push comes to shove.

How do people learn to play rugby? In my case, it was at school in England with John Davies, scrum half with London Welsh, who was also the PE teacher at my school.
My learner’s tale takes the form of two poems – both also available in audio versions.