A LITTLE reminder that Claire Throssell’s book ‘For My Boys’ is available from Amazon and Asda and the Book Vault in town.

But I did hear this week a little interesting related fact, who attended the Labour Party conference as a guest and met a few supportive MPs.

Not so much the prime minister (I refuse to give him capital letters). He made it part of his manifesto, along with all the other promises he failed on, to half the violence against women in domestic situations.

So did he even mention it at his big swanky conference? Did he f…lip.

And do you know that since Claire’s boys Jack and Paul died at the hands of their father, family courts in this country have awarded contact to parents who really shouldn’t have been in the same room as their children because all the signs were screaming that they shouldn’t.

And nineteen of those children have died at the hands of their parent as a result. Old Insincere Keir will push through laws when it suits him but not when it is so fundamentally important as to the safety of women and children. His priorities are interesting, don’t you think?

My dad’s birthday today. He would have been ninety-two. It has been nearly six years since I lost him, two years for mum and there isn’t a day that goes past when I don’t think of them.

I’ve learned a lot about grief at this level, namely that it is always waiting around a corner to jump out at you.

It may tire of you occasionally and go and torment someone else, but it never quite leaves you alone forever.

And I will probably be fine today because it’s not the big thumps that strike you most painfully, but the small needles that cut through and find the nerve.

I burst into tears weeks ago listening to a heavy rock song by Def Leppard that had nothing to do with my parents, no association whatsoever.

I have no idea what poked something in my heart so hard that I was bawling as I was driving down the M1. But as with the death this week of Patricia Routledge and Jilly Cooper – two of my icons – maybe life’s message is just a very simple: that life is transient and people die, but rather than lament, we should embrace being grateful that we were lucky enough to have them for the time we did.

Books, books and more books this week for me. I am gearing up for the launch of my 23rd in a week that marks the 20th anniversary since I got the call to say ‘You have a book deal’.

Twenty years today in fact. And time has warped because it feels like yesterday in a way and then again like forty years ago.

I remember thinking ‘A two-book deal? What the chuff am I going to write for the second one?’ I wasn’t even sure I had more than one in me.

Just goes to show what any of us have inside us waiting to come out.

And why we should try something we want to do because we just might surprise ourselves with what we are capable of.

Although I’m not sure I have any gymnastics in me, but I’ll settle for more books.