Living with a death sentence, having no idea when it will be enacted, is to straddle a void. Every word or gesture, every breath of wind or drop of rain matters to a painful degree.

How good a wave is depends on what nature’s doing. It starts to pick up when the wind blows on the water, way out at sea, then it’s all down to how strong that wind is, how long it blows for and how far it travels across the water – we call that the fetch. A big wind, a long fetch, a good stretch of coastline and you’ve got it, you’re barrelling. Pg 130

We lay in the tent at the edge of Lyme Regis, on a patch of grass between the lobster pots and the chalets, and let death in.

If we hadn’t done this there’d always have been things we wouldn't have known, a part of ourselves we wouldn't have found, resilience we didn't know we had.

Don’t let her deceive you; she looks slow, but if I turn my head, puff, she’s gone. Then I have to get the lettuce out and sit and wait; eventually she’ll smell it and come to it, but it can take hours. Pg 270

There’s talk of them clear-felling the forest; the purists want to return it to indigenous heath, like it would have been in Thomas Hardy’s day… But the pines have been here for so long. They’re as much a part of the landscape now a the old woods are. I know it’s too dark for much life in here, but there’s buzzrds, they nest here every year, and foxes, badgers, woodcock, and sloe worms and adders in the heath at the edge and in the clearings. Where will the buzzards go? It’s their home. Pg 236

Life is now, this minute, it’s all we have. It’s all we need. Pg 121

Had I seen enough things? When I could no longer see them, would I remember them, and would just the memory be enough to fill me up and make me whole?... Could anyone ever have enough memories?

At last I understood what homelessness had done for me. It had taken every material thing that I had and left me stripped bare, a blank page at the end of a partly written book. It had also given me a choice, either to leave that page blank or to keep writing the story with hope. I chose hope.

If they (UK homeless) - we - all stood together, men, women, children, we would look very different to one man alone in a shop doorway, addicted to anything that gives him a means of escape. How would we be viewed then? .... Refugees from western civilisation, cut adrift from life in a boat that rarely finds a harbour.