BOOK: The Green Meridian (Artaxerxes Press, 2011; ISBN 978-0-9565070-1-3; 272pp)

I fell in love with France when I was sixteen and had to spend three weeks in bed with ‘flu. On a friend’s recommendation I started to read Zola’sGerminal, in French. I had to resort to the dictionary many times a page to begin with, but, nothing if not stubborn, I won through in the end. By the time I met my first French girl friend at eighteen I was passably at ease in French  and of course doubly determined to get even better. One way and another I have been involved with France ever since.

In the 1980s I was asked to write The Rough Guide to France, something that I did for fifteen years. But I had always wanted to write my own book about France, nothing to do with cathedrals and history and railway timetables: a more personal look at the country I loved. I wanted to make a slow journey, a journey on foot. I kept thinking of Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, but could not decide on a route, until one day in 2000 I came upon an article in Le Monde by its culture correspondent who had crossed the country on foot from the North Sea at Dunkerque to the Spanish border, following the line of the Paris meridian, which, re-christened La Méridienne Verte, served as a central focus for France’s millennium celebrations. That’s it, I thought: there’s my route, a virtual line from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, passing, with the exception of Paris, through nowhere in particular. It would bring what it brought. I would see what I saw.

This  book is the diary of that walk,an account day by day of what I saw, heard, thought: landscapes, flower girls, snippets of history, curious encounters and lots of birdsong.

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BOOK: Schizophrenia: Who Cares?

Schizophrenia: Who Cares? (Artaxerxes Press, 2010; ISBN 978-0-9565070-0-6; 192pp) is the story of my son's twenty-year struggle with schizophrenia – mine too, come to that. It is a story of periods of reasonable stability punctuated by hospital admissions, followed by discharges into the so-called community where it is never clear who is meant to be responsible for what, who will see that the patient eats properly, keeps himself clean, receives the benefits he is entitled to, has a decent place to live; where it is never clear who is responsible for spotting an approaching relapse and who is going to do something about it when it happens. Will there be a hospital bed available? An endless cycle of anxiety and uncertainty...

I have told my story because I know it stands for all those who find themselves in the same boat and I believe it needs to be told, for the "outside" world – and I include many of the professionals in that – knows little of the daily reality of living with schizophrenia. I have also told the story of our dealings with the care services, a pretty shameful record of incompetence, buck-passing and lack of communication and co-ordination. And I have not spared the mental health charities, for in their devotion to the sloppy, evasive language of political correctness they have allowed schizophrenia to become a cinderella, too tricky to handle, best left as a wallflower.

What others have said
Salley Vickers, author of Miss Garnet's Angel and The Other Side of You:

'This impressive first-hand account of coping with a relative suffering from a serious mental illness highlights the shameful lack of proper resources available for the mentally fragile in our allegedly "caring society." Tim Salmon's moving and disturbing book should be read by the families of sufferers but more importantly should be compulsory reading for all those responsible for mental health welfare."

Nina Bawden, novelist; author of The Birds on the Trees:

'I have just finished reading Schizophrenia: Who Cares?... Salmon writes of the bureaucratic hurdles he has had to face in order to get help for his damaged child; including as evidence some of the letters he has received from organizations supposed to help the weaker members of our society which reduced me, on occasion, to both tears and laughter. We could do better than this. Salmon's story – which I found a riveting read, a proper page-turner, might show us the way.'

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DVD: Dhiava, The Autumn Journey

Dhiava (Cirrus Films; 50mins; 1997) is the DVD (PAL) of a documentary made with my friend David Hope. Shown on Greek and Swiss TV, it follows the autumn transhumant journey from the mountains to the lowland winter pastures of the same Vlach shepherds and their flocks that I wrote about in The Unwritten Places.

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BOOK: The Unwritten Places

The Unwritten Places (Lycabettus Press, Athens, 1995; ISBN 960 7269 44 6; 319pp) is an account of my adventures and encounters in the Pindos mountains of Greece in the 1970s and '80s. A large part of it tells the story of my friendship with a family of semi-nomadic Vlach shepherds from Samarina, Greece's highest village. They are also the subject of the DVD (see post above).

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UK £15.50 Europe Airmail £17.64 Rest of world Airmail £20.73