In 2006, just as my Mum approached retirement, my Sister died. She had been ill for almost 11 years, but her death at that point was still quite unexpected.

In the months that followed, having given almost the whole of the previous 11 years to nursing my Sister, ( she was 23 when she sustained brain damage) my Parents found themselves grief stricken and lost, mired in a sense of failure and loss, in which they still paddle about in today, on a good day.

I was walking my dog with a lady who introduced me to the University of the Third Age, which to all intents and purposes is a big youth club for pensioners. She gave me a leaflet and I gave it to my Parents, who discounted it straight away.

I found my Mum looking at it days later, at Watercolour classes. It turned out that, when she was an 11 year old girl, she painted a picture at school. She liked painting. The teacher took a look at it and told her never to pick up a paintbrush again. So she didn’t.

I said to her ‘Look. No matter what you were told in the past, just do it. Give yourself a break and for once in your life, do what you want to do, for yourself. Sod what anyone else thinks. If you like what you’ve done, and it makes you happy doing it, fuck it. It’s no one else’s business. Just give it a go.’

So she did. I went round there today, and she showed me this, that she painted the other day. I think it’s lovely. And also, my Dad started bowling, photography, playing the banjo and tapdancing. Not bad for a fascist bastard Thatcherite ex copper, eh?! (My Dad, that is!)