The Telegraph UK - 'My Week' (December)
Olivia Williams on getting her kit off to save the oceans
By Olivia Williams
12:15PM GMT 10 Dec 2013
In her monthly column, Olivia Williams remembers her dear departed father who taught her how to love, and urges her readers to support the campaign against deep-sea trawling
No time for a voyage in 450 words, so it will have to be a bike ride. My dear father died last weekend. After 14 years of battling just about every disorder of every system, his body finally gave up the ghost at 2am on Saturday and as I drove up to my parents’ house the street was illuminated by the blue flash of an ambulance.
He had put up a most extraordinary fight. Among many other ailments, he survived a heart attack, stroke, cancer, osteoporosis and depression. Yet he fought his way back to sufficient health and co-ordination to travel down the Grand Canyon on a mule, across parts of Thailand on an elephant, and finally, and most alarmingly, around Camden Town on a mobility scooter.
Many of his qualities would seem almost puzzling to the younger generation. He was a successful barrister with an almost comical aversion to ambition, keeping company with his family and friends rather than pursuing those who might have promoted him. He had an absence of greed or envy or competitiveness that made him a completely useless partner in a card game, but a lust for life that celebrated a bike ride or a hike, the view from the top of a mountain or a campanile. The arrogance, fawning and back-stabbing required to get a job in a world exemplified by The X-Factor or The Apprentice were utterly mysterious to him. And he was a man of his word who remained faithful to his wife till death parted them.
He will not appear in any obituary pages because being an exemplary father doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. I’d like to put that right here. He attended every play, corrected my grammar, showed me how to throw a cricket ball and change a tyre and conduct an orchestra, read me the Just So Stories, wrote me letters, befriended my friends and boyfriends, loved my husband, held my babies, held my hand and taught me how to love.
I am quite often called upon to get my kit off in my line of work, so when my old friend Greta Scacchi asked me to get naked with some deep-sea fish for her campaign it didn’t seem such a big ask. The campaign Fishlove is not just raising awareness but desperately yelling in the faces of our Euro MPs, trying to get them to vote against the deep-sea trawling that will kill off what remains of our ocean life when the vote takes place in the European Parliament on December 12. So if you want to save the oceans, or if you want to see me naked, go to www.fishlove.co.uk and sign the petition.
source
By Olivia Williams
12:15PM GMT 10 Dec 2013
In her monthly column, Olivia Williams remembers her dear departed father who taught her how to love, and urges her readers to support the campaign against deep-sea trawling
No time for a voyage in 450 words, so it will have to be a bike ride. My dear father died last weekend. After 14 years of battling just about every disorder of every system, his body finally gave up the ghost at 2am on Saturday and as I drove up to my parents’ house the street was illuminated by the blue flash of an ambulance.
He had put up a most extraordinary fight. Among many other ailments, he survived a heart attack, stroke, cancer, osteoporosis and depression. Yet he fought his way back to sufficient health and co-ordination to travel down the Grand Canyon on a mule, across parts of Thailand on an elephant, and finally, and most alarmingly, around Camden Town on a mobility scooter.
Many of his qualities would seem almost puzzling to the younger generation. He was a successful barrister with an almost comical aversion to ambition, keeping company with his family and friends rather than pursuing those who might have promoted him. He had an absence of greed or envy or competitiveness that made him a completely useless partner in a card game, but a lust for life that celebrated a bike ride or a hike, the view from the top of a mountain or a campanile. The arrogance, fawning and back-stabbing required to get a job in a world exemplified by The X-Factor or The Apprentice were utterly mysterious to him. And he was a man of his word who remained faithful to his wife till death parted them.
He will not appear in any obituary pages because being an exemplary father doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. I’d like to put that right here. He attended every play, corrected my grammar, showed me how to throw a cricket ball and change a tyre and conduct an orchestra, read me the Just So Stories, wrote me letters, befriended my friends and boyfriends, loved my husband, held my babies, held my hand and taught me how to love.
I am quite often called upon to get my kit off in my line of work, so when my old friend Greta Scacchi asked me to get naked with some deep-sea fish for her campaign it didn’t seem such a big ask. The campaign Fishlove is not just raising awareness but desperately yelling in the faces of our Euro MPs, trying to get them to vote against the deep-sea trawling that will kill off what remains of our ocean life when the vote takes place in the European Parliament on December 12. So if you want to save the oceans, or if you want to see me naked, go to www.fishlove.co.uk and sign the petition.
source