Mid-Somerset Ramble

BBC Rare Dementia Podcasts 

Firstly, the Radio 4 series on rare dementias what J and I were interviewed for back in whenever it was, was aired last week. People have been very positive about them. I thought Jo, the novelist with Semantic Dementia was the best programme of the lot.

Really worth listening to as a window into the different dementias. I hope this opens the door or rather plants the seeds for more programmes and education on rarer dementias.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kww0/episodes/player

Here’s a shortcut to my one with a totally fucking awful photo of yours truly:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kwvx

Time Stop

I’m in my childhood bedroom typing this. On this desk I did my homework and I wrote some of the most illogical yet super-creative Dungeons and Dragons adventures of all time. Amazing how many teenagers would fit in here back in the day.

(Sounds a bit weird saying that now.)

Teenagers under cultural circumstances

I’m hoping some of the creativity lives on as a morphic field, bound to the desk, and that I will be able to successfully convert a 42 year old first edition Descent into The Depths of The Earth to a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure for a party of 4 14th level adventurers. 

It’s a big ask, I’m sure you’ll agree. 

It’s taken me days just to read through the bafflingly Joycean prose of the original in the full awfulness of its tiny sans-serif justified type. As a friend said, early D&D was written by computer-programmers: it needs translating to human before digestion.

Is it a cold or hay fever? I’ll take an antihistamine (thank you spell-check) and find out.

Surrounding me are photos, books on golden ages of Welsh rugby, Ben’s Star Wars lego; outside old  neighbours who’ve been here nearly as long as my parents, multiple Ford Foci, and acres of regularly mown lawn. 

TIDY! As they say in Glamorgan. 

Here’s a word in Welsh: Hiraeth. No wonder we have King Arthur. 

I was always nostalgic. MAGA - is that an ugly version of Hiraeth? Something intangible that never was.

Properly rambling now.

Why I’m here

I’ve been asked to bugger off for a couple of weeks from Kingston, very nicely it must be said, and I was also willing. So I’m visiting my parents who are kindly eschewing Cash in The Attic on my my behalf due to my incapacity for noise. I’ve cooked for them a few times the wonderful food J cooks for me. 

‘Interesting’ was Dad’s verdict on the Butter Chicken and Black Dhal I cooked last night. That usually means ‘shite’ as far as I’m aware. He ate it all anyway. Mum’s off her food and found the tender-stem broccoli anything but.

Jesus - I could be a food writer. How difficult is this? Just wasn’t born a Coren or a Gill.

Meeting old friends

Met up with Franca, Tanith and Clare. It was nice to see them all. I have good chats with people but I’m also aware that I shouldn’t bug people like the saddo I really am. So keeping it to once a week while I’m down here, per person. 

Nice to chew the cud and have a laugh at other people’s expense. Visiting certain people is like meeting Huggy Bear in Starsky and Hutch. I’m getting the low-down from the street, baby.

John Hannam opposite asked where my van was. I told him about my dementia and that I’d had to give up. Mum and Dad haven’t told people obviously. I don’t blame them. Gossipy little place this. It’s enough for them to have to live with it without being constantly reminded of it by busy-bodies and the well-meaning.

Nerys has been busy with everything this week so I’ve seen very little of her, and Mark will be down to look after his mother from next Wednesday.

At least being Jonny-no-mates is a good incentive to sit down and write.

I miss the dogs and am starting to miss the female humans.

Atypical Dementia

It’s odd having an atypical of an atypical dementia diagnosis. When you’ve got it you don’t know what will happen next. What will be the next part of my self to go downhill. Being part of various support groups, I can see and hear people’s prose or speech degrade, to the point where they make less and less sense.

Mine is behavioural so I am just increasingly inappropriate. But, I’m not aware a lot of the time how. I have a little rule that I often - in the moment - fail to follow, and that is, if I think of something hilariously funny I should probably best not say it.

Many of the things I post now are quite outrageous I hear. I think they’re funny. 

But then again I’m a bit demented.