When James Hunt began posting about his boys online, it was a way to describe the emotions and experiences of their extraordinary lives. In sharing his family’s joy and struggles, he realised they weren’t alone
My conversation with James Hunt begins the usual way: an exchange of hellos, followed by the most mundane of questions. “How are you?” I ask.
Although he responds predictably – “I’m all right … I’m good” – we both know that underneath this answer lurks a whole world of experience, and the plain fact that some people’s everyday lives are lived in extraordinary circumstances.
Six months ago, this fortysomething father was leading the kind of life that might have caused plenty of people to break into small emotional pieces. In his Essex home town, he had long since moved back in with his elderly father, who had Parkinson’s and needed round-the-clock care from his son. His mum, who has dementia, was living in a nearby residential home. Meanwhile, the story that comes closest to defining him was continuing as he looked after his teenage autistic and learning-disabled sons, Jude and Tommy, and coped with massively difficult parental challenges – not least a constant lack of sleep.
Hunt is a fascinatingly modest, level-headed kind of presence. “There’ve been a few periods like that,” he tells me. “Sometimes I look back and think, ‘How did we do it?’, for so long and without extra support?” For a moment, his eyes look as if they’re filling up. “I don’t really know how we coped.”
