I'm once again suffering the loss of a loved one who has left his home country. Two thirds of my kids are currently living overseas.
It hurts. I wish them all the best, I really do, but it hurts, deep down inside.
This isn't new and I'm far alone.
So, right now, I'm writing this in solidarity with all the other parents who feel like me. Gutted, worried and anxious.
The migrants who have come here have parents like me. Just saying.
Beach bar, Pineda.
Spotted it in a radio and TV shop in Becontree, that radio was very classy. I'd never seen an object so beautiful.
Back in those days we listened to transistor radios in the street. Indiscreetly.
I'm not sure if I bought it myself from the paper round money but I got it, probably after months of staring at it longingly.
I must have been 14, perhaps younger.
The Fuji Denki remained in use for about 10 years before it expired, finally.
That radio, like many, witnessed history.
I remember listening to reports of Robert Kennedy's and Martin Luther Kings's assassinations while revising on the banks of my favourite river, the Roding.
And the Soviet invasion of Prague, listened to from outside the kitchen of Chadwell Heath Hospital.
When many of my friends had gone to university, I remained in Chadwell Heath for a year.
It came fishing, hitch hiked, went to uni. I have a distinct memory of playing Stevie Wonder on it in my black A40 Somerset en route to Winchelsea.
It must have been with me when another car, an FX3, caught fire on the way back from Southampton.