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" The word 'carer' makes me think of someone with a nylon overall and a long list of 'clients' to wash before she finishes her shift. A companion was something unique. A kind of live-in friend. "

Laurie Graham

Think

Long

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" My go-to author for knowing it all is Evelyn Waugh. 'A Handful of Dust' is as perfect as a book can get. "

" The thing about praising beauty is that good looks are an unforgiving task- master, a Forth Bridge of a maintenance job. The passing years present their accounts. Younger models become available. "

" In grief, after even the happiest of relationships, we go over things again and again. "

Laurie Graham

Relationships

Grief

" I think my mother was baffled by me. We were polar opposites. She was shy and retiring. I was over-fond of the limelight. Many times in my life, I was conscious of embarrassing her with my carrying on. "

Laurie Graham

Mother

Life

" I love working fictional characters into a piece of history. It plays to my strengths, which are characterization and dialogue, and assists me in my admitted weakness, plot. "

" My husband is stricken with dementia, and it's a trick of his condition that events and people from his past are more real to him than what happened five minutes ago. "

" I was fascinated by the culture clash between England and America in the 1950s. My first memories are of being a girl in those post-war years when things were really pretty grim. It wasn't like that in America, which was real boom time. "

" Sorry, I don't do castles. I hate those winding turret stairs. "

" Personally, my interest in social history ends around 1959, by which time I was an adolescent. I've always attributed this to my particular sensibilities. I like formality and elegance, and I'm fundamentally conservative. "

" There is something very easy about women's friendships that you don't see as often with men. We all know examples of this, when women will just call each other up or drop a line, not with anything specific to say. "

" I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person. "

" The wheels of publishing never slow down. "

" With Alzheimer's, recent memory is affected first. At the start, you count the memory loss in days, then hours - then in minutes. But there's also an insidious backward creep of deterioration. "

" Sundown is often the worst time of day for people with dementia. They can become restless and difficult. "

" My early novels were very understated and English. Fourteen years ago, I met and married my American husband, and as I learned more about his background and culture, I became interested in using American voices. "

Laurie Graham

Husband

Early

" I have but one rule at my table. You may leave your cabbage, but you'll sit still and behave until I've eaten mine. "

" I've always jealously guarded my feminine mystique. I've been married twice, and neither of my husbands has ever seen me put my face on. "

" Times may have changed, but there are some things that are always with us - loneliness is one of them. "

" When my children were young, one of the treats promised by their grandparents was a ride in Grandad's car. "

" Not so very long ago, certainly well into the Thirties, a lady companion was a normal feature of life for widows or lone spinsters. "

" My research process doesn't vary much. I do a little reading to establish a timeline and decide how I'm going to approach the story. "

" My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works. "

" I almost always use first person voice in my novels. It has its limitations, but it gives a sense of immediacy that's hard to create with an anonymous, all-seeing narrator. "

" My husband is leaving me. No dramas, no slammed doors - well, OK, a few slammed doors - and no suitcase in the hall, but there is another woman involved. Her name is Dementia. "

" As one ages, eventually, no matter what regime you've followed, no matter how fiercely you've fought the fight, good health becomes harder to maintain. It may disappear overnight or simply dwindle, but with every year that passes, the odds shorten. "

" In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked. "

" I'd like to see my grandchildren climb trees, not stand under them. I'd like to see them learn to make bread and brown it over a fire using my toasting fork. "

" I'm thankful my parents obliged me to live with the unvarnished truth: I might not have been a looker, but I was a better speller than the prettiest girl in my class, and I was funnier, too. "

Laurie Graham

Truth

Parents

" It was the Victorians who covered the piano legs and drew a heavy curtain over what a lady got up to in her boudoir. "

" My parents never told me I was beautiful, and for one very good reason. I wasn't. When your child is a tubby, bespectacled little oddity, as I was, it's important not to give them false expectations. "