After dinner at the Rag one of the guests came up and said he was investigating theatre tickets for Charles III. “Good idea” I responded “But only if it’s followed by a meal at Lima!.” He looked skeptical and explained the idea behind the play. It was my turn to look skeptical. The ‘k’, by the way, is the result of an American system which I can’t cope with; and the misunderstanding sounds ungrateful and graceless and I am trying to be neither. I am genuinely grateful for my guest’s continuing interest. We had discussed the Peruvian restaurant at nauseam but although my handicapped memory was clearly better than his unhandicapped one I left it and he did too but the difference was that he obviously thought I was dementing. It ties in, I think, with subjective perception against the facts. He thought I was mad, but objectively my memory was better. This also has to do with anonymity when blogging and is obviously worthy of discussion. But let it pass. Suffice it to say that when it comes to memory Parkinson sufferers can be better than the non-affected.
I had an idea based on something I wrote to Dr. Sophia. The trouble is that I forgot it and all I remember is that I wrote to Dr. Sophia about it. I am fed up with pussy footing so I append what I wrote – the doc incidentally turned me down in the nicest possible way. This is what I wrote.
“I am acutely aware of my offer to help in any way possible. It occurs to me that the country has a problem with the increasing number of old people, that part of the problem is one of education of the otherwise “well” and that the local Parkinson’s support group is particularly strong. I have recently had an article published in the Telegraph and the Mail have paid money for a Parkinson’s-related article. So I not only have relevant personal experience I should also be able to engineer publicity. Despite my own advantages however I don’t have the medical knowledge and experience to support this. You do! Might I approach the local group, citing your interest and thereby not only seek to solve an increasing problem but do so in a way which would be of local benefit. “
It occurs to me that I should offer the idea without strings to the speech therapy group in Glastonbury in which I am now involved. This is good’ Deborah who runs it has actually read the blog and approves. So have others and the people concerned know what they are talking about – they live with it and their perception has validity. We play improving games and yesterday people brought something from home and talked about it. Fascinating but the one thing everyone has in common is Parky. If the government really wants to know about living with brain damage these people are lucid, revealing and, above all, they know their stuff. It is, after all. themselves about which they are talking.
Philip died. I first met Philip Howard when he was sent by his masters at the Glasgow Herald to report on Tariq Ali’s king and country debate at the Oxford Union in the early sixties. I was doing it for the Spectator and I remember his voluminous frame bent double under the conventional press bench, full of hacks not worthy to clean Philip’s myopic eye-lens . Years later he and Myrtle turned up to cook pheasants from his loyal friend Jamie Hunter Blair at my fiftieth (P bled characteristically and copiously) and it seems only recently that I got a postcard from darkest Ayrshire. For more than 50 years he lightened my room and now he has joined his beloved Myrtle and sundry hacks, family and beagles. I shall always visualize him traipsing across some Scottish hillside, text clutched closely to the tiresome eyes, dog at heels, and whisky near at hand. The latter for you too!
This is what blogs are all about – like life itself they are slightly all over the place and they ramble and shamble. They move rapidly from exasperation to mourning and along the way they behave manically, pausing without warning, going off at tangents, restarting at once or not at all.. I wish , incidentally, that people would get me right. I have reached 70 years of age, have half a dozen grandchildren and sundry books under my own name. I am not a cause for worry. I have been lucky! A note from Laurie plus a suggested link from Tom. Evidently she will feature in a BBC proramme about her father ln WW1. The star of the show is the poet Simon Armitage and it is being shown on November 8th. I’m glad. I was fond of Pa Bennett who got me to Sweden. Proper Somerset man.
Visits were to London and Glastonbury, both good. Glastonbury was useful inter alia for reminding me of the problems with sense of humour/mischief. One game involved reading out half the title of some old hit from a card you’ve been given and the person opposite completes the title. Everything had been going almost too swimmingly and everyone got things right until it got to me. The person opposite me was Deborah who , of course, completed the quote correctly. However I. in the interests of mischief which I thought was needed, said she’d got it wrong. Obviously I had the mood of the meeting completely wrong for she simply asked “why?”. I was unable to give a satisfactory answer and simply repeated the question which she answered as before. This time I accepted that she was correct and everyone looked at me oddly. It was never alluded to again and everyone obviously thought I was dementing.
Sad. The trip to London involved several meetings with an Australian professor and his wife – we,ve stayed with them in Adelaide. Much the worst moment was when my wife revealed that in a moment of stress I had accused her of coming “from a second rate university in a second rate country”. The professor’s wife was about to ask whether I still thought Australia a second rate country” And this of a man who once told the Master that he thought there were three universities in the world – Balliol, Oxford and Cambridge, in that order – and does still. Luckily, as I say, the incident passed before it could become WW3. But it was, as someone at a different time said of another place “it waw a damn close thing”. Nip and tuck, I should say. Nip and tuck.