Can you imagine the terror of losing both your parents when you are a child? Suddenly deprived of their love, their care, their guidance and protection. Worse still, never having known them at all — losing your family history and your heritage before life even begins.
Yesterday, Bee’s son, Barny, and family visited us — a rare treat for us and for our grandson, Leon. We walked together along the seafront promenade, me swinging my stick and singing The Man from Monte Carlo, and Beside the Seaside. Leon borrowed my hat and stick, mimicking a stooped old man. I played along, happy to make memories that might one day mean something to him. I bought him the traditional ice cream — bubble-gum blue, of course — and spoiling him properly. Grandfather’s privilege.
This morning, I saw an appeal from Orphans in Need. Children in Gaza, gaunt and frightened, desperate for food, water, and medicine in the wreckage of war.
In my novel Beware the Quiet Man, my main character, Ollie, loses both parents too — his mother in childbirth, his father through rejection and bitterness. He’s raised by loving grandparents, but even that safety doesn’t last. At fifteen, he’s alone again, forced to begin a new life in a strange city, 1960s London.
For Ollie, it was a harsh beginning. For the children of Gaza, it’s a nightmare that never ends.
They need help now — food, medicine, hope — and the mercy of a world still willing to care. They need you to care enough to make a donation.