Hello and welcome to the Slow Home Podcast. My name is Brooke McCallory. And Ben McCallory is my name.

Yes, it is. Welcome to an impromptu hostful. Thank you. Episode three, we rarely do a mid-season hostful.

No, we don't. And let's just put it up front and say this probably wasn't the plan originally

when we sat down and sketched out this season. But as you know, if you've listened to the last

couple of episodes of this season, life has thrown us a couple of curveballs for want of a better

term with my dad being unwell and that has really thrown the

rhythm of our lives completely out of whack, out of tune, out of step and I think what we really

want to do is take an opportunity to have a bit of a practical conversation about ways that the ideas of

slow living and care, I guess, have unexpectedly helped us in the last month, which has been

tumultuous to say the least. So that's my plan. What's your plan, Ben? I'm going to ask you questions in

relation to that. Fantastic. Let's get into it. Just to paint the picture of where you are at the

moment. So basically you are living part of your time here with me and the

kids and then part of the time you are with your mum. Yep. And you're caring for your dad.

Yeah. Well, being your champion, your dad's champion, basically. Yeah, part of the support crew.

Yeah, exactly. The pit crew. Yeah, exactly.

The pit crew. Yeah. Is that what you're calling yourselves? That's literally what I just thought of then. All right. Let's go with it because I know cars. So tell me, what does that, what does the realities of that look like at the moment for you? Yeah, that's a good question. it gets messy.

You know, I've really had to, and it's so funny that last week's episode with M. Ella's, I spoke about uncertainty and coming to terms with that

through the lens of the pandemic, this has been that lesson turned up to 11. You know, dad wasn't, he wasn't sick.

So there was no expectation that he would be in hospital.

You know, it was one of those phone calls you get.

I was at the end of day one of recording the audio book for care.

And I got the phone call that night that dad had gone to hospital.

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