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A Pocketful of Happiness

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Six months prior to this, I was still a waiter, so getting this job in Bromley felt like a major advance. The twilight year cast included Dulcie Gray, Michael Denison, Judy Geeson, Dilys Watling, and Denys Hawthorne. Whereas she’d been coaching on a big-budget movie starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, with a supporting cast featuring Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dexter Fletcher, Edward Fox, Bernard Hill, and Sir Laurence Olivier.

He details with evocative precision what it was like to care for Washington during her illness. Anyone who has ever looked after a terminally ill person will know exactly what he means when he describes her “lemony irritability” on a bad day, and I especially liked his description of Washington’s moods vacillating “like the cast of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, between Dopey, Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Bashful and visiting the Doc”. Grant’s prose is charming and witty... An engaging story of life, love, and grief that will resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost.” Eventually, Joan relents and is glad she did, admitting it "made me feel a lot better that I've taken ownership."She takes a deep breath and declares, “Promise me that you won’t share any of this with Oilly, until we’ve had confirmation from the medics. Do you promise me?”

Joan had been in Tahiti coaching Mel Gibson on The Bounty. We hadn’t even moved in together yet, and my career prospects were provincial to put it politely, compared to the stellar company she was keeping. But she never allowed that to come between us, even though I felt it keenly. An emotional rollercoaster - profoundly moving and wonderfully entertaining. A brilliant memoir about living, loving and losing' Bernardine Evaristo Joan voice coached so many people from Kate Blanchett to Dame Julie Waters and so many many others there were literally thousands. A voice coach is someone you’d rarely think of while watching a film yet they are one of the most important to an actor to just ‘get it right’. I had absolutely no intention of publishing this whatsoever. And I was on a Caribbean beach on New Year's Day, at the beginning of last year, and posted a video saying that I felt like a turtle that had lost its shell and that the loss of my wife felt like my compass had been broken. And it had such an extraordinary social media response that it then elicited various publishers in London calling my literary agent and saying, "Would you publish a memoir?" And I was very emphatic about that. I said, "Absolutely not, unequivocally not." And my daughter very smartly said to me, "I think that it would help you process the grief that you're going through, which is so intense." Frustrating? I suppose sometimes it was. But at the same time, you know, it was always a bit tongue-in-cheek-y from her,” he says.

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Blushed and offered up the tulips, which thankfully turned out to be more than acceptable. Fired off lots of questions which she answered unreservedly and, in turn, asked me as many, mirroring my curiosity, which culminated in her casually asking, “Are you in a relationship?” while taking a casserole out of the oven.

But slowly, he uses Joan's challenge as a guide through the grief and to navigate through the world without her. She was ten years older than me [when we met], an established top dialogue accent coach of the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Royal Court Theatre, National Theatre. She coached on movies — and I was a younger actor trying to make a go of it, waiting tables and getting small jobs here and there. But she never wavered. This resulted in experiencing ‘literary whiplash’ - pulled around from an emotional chapter to subsequently being regaled with glossy celebrity tales in the next one, and feeling slightly uncomfortable about how they could be within such close proximity of one another. You write about “memory-charged” objects that you bought together. Do they lose their power without her there with you? Thank you. You have very brown, hairy arms, considering it’s the middle of winter. Have you been skiing?” I was wearing a cream cable-knit sweater, and had pulled the sleeves up while eating.

It was at this point that I suddenly felt for him. The guy who goes to the Oscars is the same guy who sits alone in a chain restaurant in Salisbury waiting for his béarnaise sauce to arrive. To have someone always beside you – or even just on the end of the phone – who understands these dizzying shifts and all their attendant lonelinesses, and who loves you wherever in the world you are, is a precious thing indeed. I think he wrote his book too soon, but I also see that he needed to do something, the gap in his life being so unimaginably huge, so very hard to bear. The family is instantly "buoyed up by the outpouring of generosity and compassion" from their friends and loved ones, which becomes a constant throughout the memoir. While I was grateful that she didn’t think I needed endless coaching, I was also frustrated that after only two sessions I no longer had a legitimate reason to see her again. She was also a few years older than me, married-but-separated, with a young son, and with a string of prestigious productions and a movie to her credit.

Distract ourselves playing Scrabble most of the afternoon, trying not to fixate on anything other than the here and now. But we know one another too well not to wonder and finally worry out loud— Do not read if you have someone very ill in your life just now but for me despite losing many family members and friends in death, two this year, it’s such a wonderful book. Personally, I think it is a little misleading to call this book a memoir - as it really charts the love story between Richard and his wife, Joan Washington and doesn't really go into all the details of Richards early life etc.

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Maybe: ‘Oh, I’m sure she’s got over that, but you are a complete idiot and you should have your tongue clamped and tied.’ ‘Yes, yes, you’re right.’ Not having those conversations any more. That’s what I miss.” Joan’s birthday. We are unabashed Christmas-aholics, and the house is baubled-up, tree kissing the ceiling, and enough fairy lights to host a Tinker Bell convention. For the past week she’s mentioned feeling breathless and has to pause halfway up the stairs. Nothing more than that. Un-characteristically, for a doctor’s daughter who has resolutely resisted any and every encouragement to see a medic about anything, she suggests calling the doctor, a first in our decades together. As with all celebrity autobiography, Grant is a victim of his own success. My mind wandered to other people who have experienced what Grant has without the exuberant wealth and high society support network that reaches the echelons of King Charles. Whilst you feel for Grant as a human, the way in which the book darts between trivial celebrirty anecdote and personal moments is emotionally draining and confusing. As a young up-and-coming actor, Grant was working as a waiter while trying to get his footing in the industry. Since Grant was born in Swaziland (now Eswatini), his agent advised him to work on developing U.K. accents to make him more marketable.

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