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Thank you

Since the launch of Friday's Child and last weekend's coverage I have been flooded with comments, emails, letters and calls. It is so moving and rewarding to receive them all, and I may be slow but I am getting up to date with replying.

Trying to keep up makes me think that I am not giving a …

Double dose

Yesterday's extract of Friday's Child in the Daily Mail caused a huge response, which still stuns me this morning.

To everyone who has contacted me: Thank you. I am replying as fast as I can!

The extract was from my book Friday's Child which is the story of what happened back then. Today …

Extracted

This morning I read the extract of Friday's Child, in the Daily Mail . It's strange, reading my words in such a condensed form. They are my words, and it is my story, but only such a small part of it.

It is humbling to read the comments people have left under the story, and so many. Really …

Hot off the press

… for an extremely nice dinner with friends, stopping at their house for glass of champagne.

'Look children, it's Ben's book,' Sally said.

'Wow. You're famous,' was her son's response, before climbing over the fence to play in the neighbour's garden.

It'd be easy to enjoy the 'fame' but that's not why I wrote Friday's Child.

I emailed some friends earlier, to remind them that they …

Friday's Child

… Distraught, her husband Ben struggled to comprehend his loss and to care for their two young children. It later came to light that Jessica's condition can usually be easily detected and prevented but in this case nothing was done until it was too late. Ben and his family successfully sued the NHS for negligence in 2007.

This is Ben's heartbreaking story of dealing with his grief while …

Time for T

… girl.

The five of them continued to meet every week, usually for lunch on Wednesdays, until the children started going to nursery school. The meetings became more irregular, but they stayed in touch and sometimes us Dads joined them for dinner. In the years since, the number of children has grown to eleven.

Since Jessica's death the girls have welcomed me into their group as an honorary …

Taxing talk

… which I also missed, has evoked much sentiment and anger, I read. Why is this? Do we think that children cannot cope with death? Must we shield them from All That Is Bad?

What then when it happens closer to home? How will they cope with it?

It is important for children to understand the process of life, of aging and of death - but we can teach them this without instilling fear and …

No crawling

… tomorrow.

I was worried about the effects that wood-boring critter-killer would have on small children, but the answer was reassuring: 'Just don't let your children crawl under the floor for 24 hours, that's what Health & Safety guidelines say.'

This morning Harry went back to school, but could we find his holiday homework folder before he went? Not a bit of it.

My best guess is …

Fresh inspiration

Nearly six years ago, Jessica and I bought our first house. It was a big project, and we knew it would be a long term one. We did a lot of refurbishment and decorating together for a couple of years, but it all came to a halt in 2004.

Since then I have done very little myself, rarely finding …

An Inspector Calls

I had a visit from the VAT Inspector this morning. I got a bit behind with my VAT Returns and they wanted to make sure I wasn't up to no good.

Business has been slow to non existant for the past few years, so it didn't take long and we soon started to talk about what I was doing now. I showed …