Guy Kennaway

With today’s vote on the assisted dying bill, I am reminded of my mother. Susie was 89, in failing health but of sound mind, when she took me aside at her house in the south of France to tell me she wanted me to kill her. She had no intention, she said, of enduring the humiliation of a decaying memory and a crumbling body, and was determined to avoid the old people’s home, the geriatric ward and the hospice. Some days my mum really wanted to kill herself, and some days she really did not ‘You have to know,’ she said to me, ‘not only when to leave a job, or a party, or a relationship, but more importantly, when to leave life itself.’ Susie told me she needed help with her plan of killing herself, and asked if I would help.

Are you looking at your tickets to Jamaica and thinking: why on earth did I decide to go there, with its army curfew, state of emergency and spiralling homicide rate? The Jamaican government has just extended its state of emergency until May and has advised tourists not to leave their hotels unaccompanied. But don’t go online just yet to see if you can scrabble some money back on your flight. I am writing this while sipping a rum and listening to laughter and reggae in my local bar a few miles from the picturesque parish of St James, where in the past six months 335 people have been murdered, and no one here, me included, feels the least bit scared.