My Delinquent Mum and Dad

“Somehow, I survived my first 11 years, despite electrified railway lines, dangling from balconies, tidal waves, flooding rivers, drainage pipe acrobatics, sewer walking, cavorting about in trees, drinking river water and attempted poisonings.”
Against a brilliantly evoked background of working-class life in post war Britain young Di struggles to grow up while her neglectful parents pursue lives of perpetual adolescence.
Even after leaving home and a marriage with children the role reversal continues. Di and her family have to deal with a grandmother who invents life threatening illness to get attention and the outlandish exploits of a grandfather reported in The Sun as the oldest man in England to be
electronically tagged.
“I was to receive a lot of phone calls from my parents wanting me to do something or solve a problem for them. I was to hear from hospitals, psychiatric nurses, the police and social workers; care home managers; coming from Essex, the Isle of Wight, Guildford and Bournemouth; I could expect one from anywhere really.”

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, as Diane Barnes demonstrates to perfection in this jaw dropping personal and Pythonesque memoir. Martin Riley