Christopher Stocks

Island Life

Custard with everything

Big day today: my father arrives home from the hospice. My parents’ house has been filling with equipment since the middle of last week (electric bed, lightweight wheelchair, ventilators and tanks of liquid oxygen…) but now the day has finally arrived. Everyone’s quite nervous about it, not least my father himself, which is hardly surprising, especially given how cosseted he’s been at the Joseph Weld Hospice in Dorchester – with nurses on call 24 hours a day, excellent food, wine with his lunch, afternoon cakes and (best of all) custard and ice-cream with every meal. Talk about keeping a man happy…