Aileen Boyd-Otley was easy to read, as an author and as a person. Her writing was very much like she was: sunny and smiling. Aileen died a year ago this week, aged 83. 

Now her writing has been given new life by her son Damian. He has commissioned a website featuring many of her poems and children’s books.

These are charming works set in a Lake District of snowy footprints, blooming daffodils and ripe brambles.

Talking animals are commonplace in Aileen’s Lakeland. Humans and animals are frequently in friendly conversation.

It is pleasing to hear that the author was as free from cynicism as her work suggests.

“She was a very bright, outgoing, optimistic person,” says Damian, 55. “I can honestly say I never argued with her. If there was anything to say it would be said amicably.

“She was rather modest about her work. If people said anything nice about it she used to get a bit embarrassed.”

Aileen’s writing was published independently in the 1970s and some later work was self-published.

Poet Laureate John Betjeman admired her work and agreed to write a foreword to one of Aileen’s books, although when the time came he was terminally ill and unable to keep this commitment.

Illness has played a bigger part in Damian’s life than he might have liked.

But this is not a sad story. It’s a tale of overcoming his own problems while caring for his parents in their time of need.

It’s a tale whose warm heart is worthy of Aileen’s stories. And this one is true.

Damian used to be an admin officer at Carlisle’s RAF base, 14MU. In 1995 he became a full-time carer, first for his father Desmond and then for Aileen.

The family lived in Carlisle, latterly on Warwick Road. Damian is Desmond and Aileen’s only child.

His parents were very different people, which Damian thinks is one reason why their relationship worked.

Desmond served in the Scots Guards during World War Two and saw “living skeletons” emerging from Belsen concentration camp.


Desmond Otley “I loved him dearly,” says Damian. “But he was a bit more volcanic than mum, largely because he was in the war. He had an explosive temper. He used to burn himself out. Ten minutes later it was all over.

“I’m more like my mother. I don’t like confrontation and arguments.

“Dad wasn’t physically violent or anything. He was against war. He said soldiers don’t start wars but they have to finish them.”

In his later life Desmond developed Parkinson’s disease. He also had an inoperable brain tumour and his condition deteriorated into dementia.

“He forgot who we were,” says Damian. “Which I’m glad about because he never missed us. I knew he’d forgotten who I was because he stopped shouting at me!”

In 2012 Desmond went into a nursing home. Around this time Aileen became ill. She was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.

Damian broke the news. “All she said was ‘What a shame. I’ve got so much I want to do.’

“I was more upset than she was. Knowing that I have epilepsy and depression, which go together like Siamese twins, she said ‘I hope you don’t do something silly after I’ve gone.’

“I told her I wouldn’t. She said ‘That’s all right then. I’ll die happy.’”


Damian Boyd-Otley Damian’s epilepsy began after an appendix operation when he was 12.

“During the operation, I died. My brain was starved of oxygen. I don’t know how long, probably seconds. It proves to me there must be an afterlife. I must have gone somewhere to come back.”

He has lived with epilepsy, and the depression which often accompanies the condition, ever since.

“I used to have seizures in my sleep. Mum would come into my room saying ‘You sound like you’ve turned into a werewolf! All this groaning and snarling.’

“I always think of these things as character strengths, not weaknesses. I think they’ve made me a better person. I realise I’m not in charge.

“People still have funny ideas about epilepsy, that it’s to do with insanity. But it’s a physical thing. I like to talk about it, to open the windows and let the light in.”

Desmond died in 2014. He was 88.

By then Aileen’s cancer had progressed. Damian had spent two years as her carer by the time she went into Eden Valley Hospice on New Year’s Eve, 2014.

“I spent the last two nights in the hospice sleeping in her room, in an armchair.

“On the night she died she asked me to open the window. She said ‘Just let me go outside.’ It’s as if she knew she was going away.

“Next morning I noticed that mum looked different. Her face seemed to be bathed in a glow, which seemed unusual in a gloomy room. A priest told me later that this could be ‘being bathed in the light of God’.

“I could tell, on closer inspection, that she had gone. The last thing I did for her was comb her hair before they took her away.”

Damian had lived with Aileen all his life. Losing both his parents in less than a year has been undeniably difficult, although his religious faith has helped.

“We don’t own people. We just borrow them for a few years then they go back to head office. They’re still alive, just in a different part of life.”

He admits that the recent past has been “a strange, weightless experience”.

He certainly came close to floating last month when water flooded the family home.

Damian waded out, knee-deep, and is staying in a city centre hotel. The stress triggered an epileptic seizure on his first night there. Frozen in the dark, he had an image of his body being found next morning.

“I thought ‘That’s the end... ‘ but I have a chance to go on. That’s good.”

He sees his future away from Warwick Road. He hopes to begin a diploma in professional cookery at Carlisle College in September.

Damian is trying to have some of his mother’s books reprinted and there will be more work on the website he created in tribute to her.

Some of his own writing is also there: an extract of a novel for young people he started at 19, about a supernatural, talking cat. Talking animals: like mother, like son.

Perhaps Damian’s biggest challenge now is finding a new role after 20 years of caring for his parents.

He says: “When you come out of being a carer you’ve got to start your own life again in a sense.

“In many ways being a carer is rewarding. It’s a nice way of saying thank you for the things people have done for you. You’re sort of repaying them.

“It’s also a nice way to say goodbye. It’s a job that comes to an end. There’s only one way it comes to an end.”

To see some of Aileen and Damian’s writing visit http://aileenboyd-otley.co.uk