A Pocketful of Happiness

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A Pocketful of Happiness

A Pocketful of Happiness

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I ask if his friends have started trying to fix him up with eligible women. “Some have, yes. And I find that absolutely bizarre. It’s not something I could even conceive of at this point. It’s still too raw and present, and I am still having an ongoing conversation with my wife in my head,” he says. But it’s not, of course, the same as the real thing. Again the frustration of not being able to be by her side when she’s having the scan. She reappears twenty minutes later. His decision to form the book’s narrative jointly out of the most enchanting highs (the Oscars, karaoke with Olivia Colman in a house formerly owned by Bette Davis) and the bleakest lows (Joan’s diagnosis, her fury when Grant inadvertently used the word terminal one day to describe her illness) came, he said, out of his desire to accurately capture what most people’s lives are like… [Richard and Joan’s] relationship is the fascinating central pillar of the book.” Tongue-tied, I can only slowly nod in agreement. It’s the first time that either of us has dared utter that toxic “C” word. 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”.

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.

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Brutal to witness Joan telling Oilly that “more tests are required, chemotherapy is likely, as I have an as yet undiagnosed form of lung cancer.” Walk, lurch downstairs, utterly overwhelmed and discombobulated. Tears blurring everything. Grateful to have something to do. British actor Richard E. Grant (C) poses on the red carpet with his wife Joan Washington (R) and his daughter Olivia (L) upon arrival at the BAFTA British Academy Film Awards on February 10, 2019.(TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

The CT scan has revealed a dark mass on your left lung, Joan, so we need you to go to the Marsden Hospital in Sutton for a PET scan at eight fifteen tomorrow morning.”She had faith that I would succeed at something," Grant says. "Her faith really galvanized and sustained me through incredible months of unemployment or doubt. So I'm lifelong indebted to her for that." I entered into this book under the notion it would be solely focussed on Grant’s experience of losing his wife. Understandably so, given the memoir’s title is the parting advice upon her death, in addition to Grant’s press tours where he continually touted this as a memoir on Joan’s terminal cancer. He signed up for classes through The Actors Centre in London, which Washington happened to be teaching. He says he later pursued private lessons with her to work on evolving his "Swaziland colonial accent" from his childhood. What’s tough is no longer having what I call the ‘steering wheel stuff’, the stuff that you talk about at the end of the day, when you call the person you love most in the world and say: ‘Well, I spoke to the person from the Guardian, and oh my God she was the person from the Guardian at the Oscars,’ because I’d want her view on it,” he says.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
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