R.I.P Colin Saul-Death of a quiet man.

 Born on the 19th January 1933, passed away on the 22nd December 2011. You are forever Imprinted in my memory Colin R.I.P

Colin Saul was a unique man of intellect the likes of which I/we will never see again and he will be sorely missed.

You see Colin was not only my Brother in Law but my friend. Colin helped me through the formative years of my marriage to his sister Beryl whenever troubles struck and asked nothing in return. He was a generous man, not only of deed but in body, who gave his time freely without aforethought and had no malicious thoughts or intentions in his well read head. He seen the best in everybody, even though they did not warrant it, which I am sure I did not many a time.

Colin, if I recollect rightly, was the first from the Saul family to go to college and wanted to be an optician but that was not to pan out, he ended his working life in the petrochemical industry and used to take samples regularly from huge tankers back to the lab for analysis. I'm sure that taking these samples was a contributory factor in him contracting Vascular Dementia. Colin was a never smoker.

You succumbed, my friend, to that robber of mind, body and soul that is called Dementia. But you did not give in to this thief lightly, you hung on as if you were clinging to life it's very self and we whom are left behind new this, we applauded in our very hearts and hoped amongst all the odds you would survive your ordeal...but alas this was not to happen.

Good night Colin, and God bless.

Colin at College, extreme right.

Colin as a young man.

Something was wrong.

Around that time in 2007, when I thought something was wrong with Beryl's mental health I also noticed she kept complaining about a non nondescript 'stinging' in her left arm. That was the excuse I made to see the doctor, making sure it was s female doctor as I was thinking that that would be less of an ordeal for her as she infrequently saw doctors on a regular type basis, even for checkups that she deemed 'invasive' (I'm thinking of the smear test, you ladies know what I mean). She went, not long after the menopause, for a smear test and she found it an ordeal and never went again, she said it was painful too.

So she was never too keen on seeing doctors and nurses, like much of her, and my generation, we only made appointments to see them when it was really, really necessary. The younger generation forget their history and think the NHS has been here forever but there was a time, before the National Health Service was born in 1948 and overseen by the Labour leader Aneurin Bevan and ordinary working folk had to pay for a consultation and prescriptions or buy health care insurance to see them through illness, a lot of which was brought on by deprived living conditions and work in industry. It was instilled into people of our generation that the NHS was god sent to the hard working classes and to this day I am proud of this countries commitment to the NHS but not proud of the way it is going and have many misgivings. But I digress.

The doctor was marvellous and noticed from Beryl's files that she had not been to the surgery for a long while and decided to give her the 'full works.' Beryl's heart and blood pressure were fine and her blood samples came back negative...she, to the layman was as "fit as a fiddle". During the middle of all this I spoke up about my concerns about Beryl's mental state and all she could do (the doctor) was refer her to the Memory Clinic.

Memories!

Our first visit to the memory clinic was, Er, memorable. The first person you have to see is the clinic nurse who goes through an evaluation process straight out of a manual. I was told at the outset not to interrupt or try and give Beryl any help in phrasing answers etc but could give my thoughts afterwards. The usual questions ensued:

What day is it?
What month is it?
What year is it?
What Season is it?
Who is the president of the USA?
Who is the Prime Minister of the UK?

All standard stuff that I had expected but then the nurse went on for over nearly an hour with diagrams, phrases and, in the middle of all this, would talk about a scenario involving two or three people but would stop half way through and say that she would come back to it then somewhere down the line would ask Beryl to recall the scenario and give answers to her questions about it...well, I couldn't remember most of this type of questioning and felt for Beryl. There is now doubt though that she has the disease though. The next thing was a brain scan. And since then nothing, Nada. We are totally alone with Alzheimer's and I think I prefer it that way.I couldn't bear leaving her with someone she does not know as she looks for me whenever I am out of sight. The time will come though when I have to leave her in the care of others but now is not the time.

I think I am up to the present now and will blog other times about the day to day workings of someone who has Alzheimer's.

To be continued...

The first inklings that something was wrong.

It was around 2006 when I thought something was not right with Beryl. She kept saying the same things over and over as if she had just mentioned whatever we were talking about for the first time. I took no action and let it slide, as it were.

In early 2007, around February or March, I was asked by my consultant to come into hospital for around a week as my skin complaint had burst out all over my body. They were treating me for Eczema but were stumped as how to treat it. I went into hospital with much trepidation. One thing that bothered me was that I could not smoke and a nationwide smoking ban was looming. I'll leave the smoking ban aside for the moment as my main concern was leaving Beryl alone for a week. Luckily there was only one blip where she was concerned. She phoned me up because she'd forgotten how to set the microwave. Anyway I found a place to smoke with the other smoking patients that was not too far away from my ward but had a run in with a doctor there who pointed out the no smoking signs outside and I told him in no uncertain terms that it was not against the law to smoke outside. He was and odious anti smoker and had upset one woman by calling her names.

The consultants eventually decided that I did not have Eczema but Psoriasis.

Anyway after I got out of hospital and been put on a drug called Azathioprine the symptoms soon went, I am on Azathioprine for the rest of my natural life.

The impending smoking ban took over my life as I was incensed that our government could be so cruel to force people, whatever their age or infirmity, out of pubs, clubs and bingo halls into the harsh British winter days and nights, especially using the mythical SHS fraud (Second Hand Smoke) to push through such draconian legislation. I went onto the Internet to find out if I was the only one that was opposed to such a dreadful and divisive law. I soon found out I was not alone.

I found a forum called The Big Debate that was soon to transform itself into Freedom2Choose. We then formed local Freedom2Choose branches for us to meet each other and form action committees in our local areas. I started the F2C North East branch which met at The Tardis in Redcar, not a million miles from where I live. After a couple of meetings there we moved to a pub in Drighlington where the manager and his wife were opposed to the ban and had a banner up on their building to say so. The Tardis went the way of most pubs after the smoking ban and no longer trades as a public house and is now a cafe. I now had to get on two trains and then a bus journey to get to the Painters Arms in Drighlington which was made all the more harrowing because you are not allowed to smoke on trains and now many train stations do not let you smoke on their open air platforms. It was still worth the effort though and I made many videos for Youtube about our meetings and watching those videos I could see something missing when I saw Beryl's eyes and demeanour, she seemed lost and not quite 'with it'.

It was late December 2007 when it was finally brought home to me that Beryl was entering a stage of dementia. She asked me where her mother was, a question that had me in tears as her mother had died in 1981, the year that Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married. How was I going to get her to see a doctor? That was my main problem as getting Beryl to do anything was a hardship so I had to resort to subterfuge because she was never one to bother doctors and had great physical health up till then.

To be continued...

36 hours

I am deviating from my own set timeline as Beryl's heath took a turn for the worse in Monday.

On that day, around 5pm, Beryl complained of a stomach ache which I assumed would pass but by 7:30 pm it persisted and I told her she should go lay down for a few hours and see if that eases it. At midnight she started vomiting and was more unresponsive than usual to my directions when getting her up to be cleaned and remove the soiled bedclothes. She also became very lethargic. After cleaning her and the bed being remade she went back to sleep only to wake up around 5am vomiting again. First thing come 9am I called the Doctor out. He examined her thoroughly and concluded that she had a 24 hour bug and prescribed tablets to stop the vomiting. All day yesterday she still was unresponsive and lethargic but, thankfully, the vomiting had stopped. It really was a worrying time for both of us.

Beryl slept relatively easily during last night and this morning. Today she is able to get up and sit in the living room and has become less lethargic and a little more responsive. Her Alzheimer's made her sickness all that worse and I feared that this bout of sickness would have serious consequences but am glad that she is recovering. She is not eating properly but I hope this will change as the hours go by. Time is the best healer, or so they say.

To have and have not.

Suffice is to say that our marriage had many ups and downs, as most marriages do but when you are going through those 'ups and downs' you feel as though you are the only one that is experiencing them. We, like most couples, lurched from one crisis to another but in hindsight it was the making of us and was the glue that kept us together.

I had no misgivings about the age difference between us but Beryl had at times talked about her inability to give us kids, as if it was something to do with her and her age. I never thought of going for a test to find out who had the problem because I was of the mind that if it does not happen, then it does not, that's life and what it throws at you, except it or forever be in pain of self doubt. However I got the impression that Beryl thought that she had let me down for not producing children and often asked me if I was 'dissapointed' in her not producing, as it were.

Beryl, who was 32 when we married, had her periods* for another 14 or 15 years after the consumation of it and had every opportunity to concieve...but it just did not happen. Every now and again throughout our marriage she would bring this subject up and beat herself up with anxiety over it, there was no need. I will not cry over something that I have no control over but have sympathy towards those who do.

Anyway, needless to say our marriage survived over the many obstacles that life throws at us and we got to our Ruby Wedding anniversary on the 14th of August 2011.

Beryl was riddled by Alzheimers by then so a get together for our aniversary was out of the question.

We got no cards from any of our families on our Ruby wedding aniversary which tells me that we are alone in this crisis and it is just me and Beryl up against the rest of the world...just as I knew it has always been.

*It irks me that men have a problem with a women's menstrual cycle and are 'frightened' to ask a chemist, or buy from a supermarket that that their partner needs. I regularly went to the chemist for tampons for Beryl when she had the need and did not turn a hair...until I saw what she did with them...ewwwwww. And us men think we suffer!

...To be continued.

What's a neverous breakdown anyway?

Fueled by that 'flee in my ear' by married soldiers that extolled the virtues of married women in the forces should unreservedly follow their spouses I hassled Beryl to come join me and give up her adherence to making a home for ourselves and saving money to do so. She gave up her solid work to enter serfdom as an army wife, a roll that took it's toll on her mentally.

Munster, Germany was a turning point.

We were given, as our army abode, the top floor of a shambolic house which is commonly known as the attic. To say it was spartan is a disservice to Spartans, it was a shithole! The old and decrepit woman who ran it was fond of saying in her best English "no hot water!."

But hey, there was a pub just across the road and I, with my army mates, availed myself of it and on certain nights (most nights if I am to be truthful,) it was MEN ONLY.

Beryl was a woman that believed in woman's rights and she would stick to it rigidly, she would not see women being treated as mere dogs that should be kept in their kennels and only bark when their masters say so. She was forthright and did not shy of saying what she believed in and if she was wrong she would say so. She was that type of woman. Her humanity was taken away from her when I 'forced' her to follow me in Germany.

And in Germany I saw her disintegrate from a caring, compassionate woman to a casualty of my fantasy of having a wife at my side that did my bidding, no matter the consequences!

One day we 'lads' were having a drink over the road when Beryl walked in saying she wanted some company and then got herself a drink and sat with us. Needless to say the 'man buddies' of mine were not impressed and never let an opportunity go to tell me what to do to keep my 'woman' in check.

True to the idiot that I was, when we got back to our dismal attic flat, I became John Wayne and drunkenly took her over my knee and 'spanked' her before paying for it handsomely.

A few days later Beryl had a 'nervous breakdown'.

In the army hospital I was told by a psychiatrist that the forces have no thought to 'army wifes'. They allow husbands to bring them over to a country where they do not understand the language nor the culture and the husbands go on 'exercises' which takes their menfolk away for weeks or months at a time! Some hardy women can take this but not every woman is cut out to be an army wife. There is more that I can say on this but I will not, I will just tell you that Beryl's breakdown was my primer to get out of the army as she was more imprtant than it.

I will reflect to the past sometimes in this blog but I want to start dealing with the here and now and with  my wifes Alzheimer's because, as I write, her condition worsens. I will have all the time in the world to write when this terrible disease takes it's final toll.

To be continued...

The cheapness of...

One of those on the 'front line' was a young chap who, god forgive me, I cannot remember his name, went home that Christmas with a spring in his step knowing that the worst excesses of Northern Ireland were behind him. I will never forget that he lived in a town that I thought was a figment of my Glaswegian imagination, Auchtermuchty.
He, like most of us those days, would think nothing about thumbing a lift and give no thought to mad axe murderers or pedophiles, people were thoughtful and would decide if picking up a passenger was a wrong move and most of the time it was not.


My friend, after serving 4 months in Northern Ireland, was walking along a big stretch of road on his way to Christmas merryment when a car ran into him and, the spineless bastard, drove off leaving him for dead, he was around my age then, 19 FFS! The driver that killed him was never found. I was one of the coffin bearers at his funeral and it was one of the most painful days of my life!
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At 19 years of age I was a very nieve young man, newly married and had a stint in NI during the 'troubles' under my belt, troubles that I had a bit of resonance with as my mother is Northern Irish and I had many relatives there. I stupidly wrote to one of those relatives and asked If I could come visit when I had a few days off...I was sternly told to keep away!

I never joined the army to fight a dirty war in a country that was supposed to be part of the UK, I joined up after being turned down by the merchant navy (I was 16 at the time) and then seeing a poster for the army, a poster that showed soldiers enjoying a skiing trip in some far flung country that I would not normally go to if I had the chance, the poster just looked enticing!


I turned twenty in December 1971 but became no wiser!


We, me and Beryl, had a blinding Christmas, as you would expect, then I got the call that I was being sent to Munster, in Germany.


Beryl was still working at the GEC as a bank wirerer and saving the pennies for a deposit on our first home.

Once we soldiers got to Munster, and after we unpacked, we went to the NAFFI that very first night and quaffed many beers. One of the things I remember most was, due to the cheapness of cigarettes there, that everyone that smoked lit one up and promptly stuck it into an unused glass of beer, they were so cheap that we could not believe how cheap they were compared to the UK's inflated, and much taxed, prices were. And they [in Germany] allowed you to watch porn on the tv??? I thought I was in heaven!


While the drink, and cigarettes, flow, brains go out of the window!


During our merryment one of the older, married, soldiers laid a flee in my ear."you should bring your wife over here, the army gives cheap housing you know and it is her duty to follow her husband!" The other married men around me agreed and I was sent on a course that was to change our lives.

To be continued...

A whirlwind romance and the IRA

Many things happened in the intervening months before our idyllic wedding at the fairytale church called St Cuthbert's which I will relate to later but before I go there I will say now that our marriage may never have happened because my mother took umbrage at me marrying a woman 14 years older than myself and sent a letter to Beryl before our nuptials saying so to voice her concerns and because of this our marriage may never have occurred. Not long afterwards my mother and Beryl became firm Friends. My mothers only concern, I realise now was, for her firstborn.

Anyway we were married on the 14th of August 1971 after a whirlwind courtship.

Back then life was simpler; though we didn't realise it at that time. It was in the days when the  microprocessor was a fantasy and a big mac was a very large Scotsman and hand held calculators were the must have item of the day as decimalisation came in to confuse us all here in the UK. Oh, and there was a little domestic war here that was to engulf the world. The Irish question reared it's ugly head years before our marriage but I found myself, a nineteen year old, in the thick of it only three weeks into my marriage.

From boyhood to manhood
When I got to Northern Ireland I was stationed at the mill, a then defunct factory, that housed the Scots Guards for their tour of duty. As army accommodation go it was sparse, to say the least. We were well fed though, given the situation we found ourselves in, but the comforts of a wife and children back home was just a reality us soldiers kept in our minds to keep us sane. When we walked outside of our 'comfort zone' at the mill it was then that reality hit us as sure as any bullet.
When I first went on patrol the first thing that sticks in my mind, apart from the sentry on duty that first day was... speed bumps! I'd never seen them before but by god I've seen them since, they are everywhere now! Apart from the speed bumps another thing that struck me, being a Glasgow lad, was how I could be walking down Buchanan Street on any given night, the only difference being was that I was dressed up like action man and told to keep watching the windows above in the tenements we were passing as snipers could have your name on a bullet for you. Buchanan Street it was not, that was for sure, scary times indeed.

So there was I, on my very first patrol, walking down the Falls Road with my SLR rifle attached to one arm by a sling in case anyone took my SLR from me and turned it round to shoot me in the face, (the sling was short enough to prevent this).

That first patrol went smoothly but I cant say that for the rest of my 'tour' as I escaped a bombing and my mate was killed just a few yards from me.

The dutiful wife was making plans.

Back home in Blighty Beryl was beavering away at the GEC (General Electric Company, which has long since gone) and saving up for our chance to get  us onto the property ladder and was amassing a deposit for a home. She had it all worked out till I later threw a spanner in the works. Little did I know it but I was putting pressure on her finances as I asked for a ten bob here, five shillings there and any other little treats she could throw my way as that's what all the other wives of soldiers in NI were doing...I was being totally selfish but didn't know it at the time.

One particular day I received a ten bob note and a transistor radio from Beryl and I was elated beyond belief, it didn't half lift my spirits.

Before lunch I took the radio down to my mate who was a cook where we were billeted.

Our main home from home, if you like, was the Mill but the MOD had acquired a house on the corner of of the Falls Road and some other street that I can't remember.  This house was for the sole purpose of watching the Falls Road and any miscreant that may travel upon it, whether it be a joyrider or a full blown IRA cell, this house was a strategic advantage point for the MOD. The windows of the house were bricked up with breeze block barring two for sentries to poke their SLR's out of, ready to shoot anyone that threatened the post.

While I was in 'the house' I never saw a rifle being fired in anger at any person or vehicle that used the Falls Road but did see some very funny sights that you could see on any British road on a Saturday night. Did I mention the ordinariness of the situation? Well that ordinariness was to be shattered one night, the night I saw my first dead body, and that dead body happened to by my friend who I lent my transistor radio to for a day.

The 'house' was spartan but functional, there was two floors, the bottom floor was intended for recreation and the top floor was for sleeping in so there were many bunk beds to house weary soldiers after a 'shift' patrolling the streets of Belfast.

The MOD decided that they would buy the house next door from a man that was in hospital and wanted a quick sale, so it was bought by the MOD. The house being bought by them had now to be renovated to suit soldiers needs so a hole, big enough for a man to walk through, was made, with stairs, into the next house.

I came off of patrol that night and it was late, very late and so, after a late diner, I was ready for my bed. I climbed onto the top bunk and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The Big Bang.

It was about five or six in the morning when I felt a tug at my right shoulder that wakened my up. When I opened my eyes all I could see was dust everywhere, there was no escaping it. The dust was in your ears, eyes, nose and throat and you could not breath. I was guided down the stairs out into the bright Autumn sunshine where I coughed my lungs out for five minutes as military efficiency took over and did a roll call, it was then that I realised that my friend was missing.

The structure of the house was still standing and as to how safe it now was I can not say but two of us decided to go looking for our friend, the cook. We precariously walked through the rubble, making our way to the kitchen.

The kitchen was strewn with bricks and a large hole could be seen through into the next house that was bought by the MOD. We walked precariously through the kitchen into the back garden but saw nothing before making our way back outside to the front of the house. As we tentatively walked back through the kitchen area I saw the radio that Beryl had sent me all smashed up sitting on top of a pile of decimated bricks. It caught my attention amongst the debris and as my eye surveyed it I noticed a bloated hand in the mess that was once the proud domain of my friend. We had found him under that rubble and took him into the front garden area where his bloated corpse awaited, for an interminably long time, an ambulance to take him away.

I went to pieces that day, not the first time on my tour of duty, and started slagging off passers by just because they were Irish, which was rich, when I think about it as I have an Irish mother. But grief took hold and I did not know what I was saying, so much so that I was taken to hospital as a casualty of the 'Irish question' and that little known, then, affliction called stress. God knows what stress Beryl was going through as the news filtered through but, in hindsight, it was to cause her many problems with her own mental health.

How did they do it?
Readers may ask how the bomb was set in a situation that was an army base? Well it was to do with the house next door.

It was being renovated by local companies and each night, and every hour through the night, a sentry would walk through the 'hole in the wall' from our house to the next and check everything was ok. One of his duties was to look at the materials that were being stored there. He would rake his hands through bags of cement to see if anything was burried within them and this night he found nothing. He went back up the stairs and was about to return through the 'hole in the wall' when the bomb went off.

What he could not have known was that the bomb was put into hollowed out breeze blocks, blocks that were stacked up against the wall that was adjacent to the kitchen in the next house... my friend, the cook had no chance. The sentry survived but had mental health problems arising from that day. And as I have hinted above it does not just involve those on the 'front line'.

To be continued...

The arrogance of youth

The 'incident' I referred to in my last post as my "shame" can be put down to a few things but alcohol, lust, the feeling of rejection as I was no longer the center of her attention and hormones are but a few.
Late into the night at the party that Christmas Eve of 1970 I followed her into the bathroom where we kissed ardently and I pursued my own interests but went to far. Living with a bunch of men who have definitive ideas on how to treat women has to rub off on a young man, needless to say their ideas of how to treat a woman are bordering psychopathic. During my six years in the army I was to witness numbing cruelty by some of these soldiers towards their womenfolk.
Anyway, the upshot was that it slowly dawned on me that I was trying to take advantage of a women that was inebriated and not in full control before I stopped and apologised profusely. Well that and a stab in the foot from the pointed heels of her knee length kinky boots. Still apologising TheBigYin left the building.

I've told Beryl about our first meeting many times but she said she didn't remember. I, on the other hand, have never forgotten how close I came to becoming a sexual deviant and every time I do think of that night my six foot stature shrinks somewhat. There were no Harriet Harman's in those days or I'd be on a register somewhere.

Kismet
I was walking down the high street in Windsor when I espied a lady I'd met on the Christmas Eve of the last year (1970) and said, "Hello, do you remember me from the party a few days ago?" My ego kicked in again when she said... "No!" and walked on by. I decided there and then not to leave it like this and pursued her for a date at the then all pervasive burger chain called Wimpy's for a coffee and a chat. She relented and my life changed dramatically from then on.

Many coffees later over the intervening month or so led to me proposing marriage... I was smitten after all!

As we 'walked out' together we must have looked an odd sight, me six foot tall and her five foot two and a vision of loveliness, a stunner as we used to say back in the day. Of course I was oblivious to this disparity in our competing statures as I was 'all lurved up', still am if the truth be known. Anyway, the day I proposed she said she had a big secret to tell me.

I can't remember if I ever asked her her age while we were courting but I must have or she wouldn't have come clean. I now know that Beryl always gave her age as a good few years younger than she really was and I thought that was endearing and that all women did the same, which I'm sure they do. But back then I didn't really care what age she was, I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. She admitted, on proposal day, that she was 32 years of age.

My first thoughts were, if I recollect correctly, was... she's gonna reject me again because she thinks I'm too young for her and I was waiting for today's equivalent of 'yer dumped' tumbling from her glossed, down turned lips.

Somehow I managed to reassure her and she gave me a Del Monti, she said yes!

I will finish for now but in following blog writings about the subject of Alzheimer's I will endeavour show how a vibrant woman of fashion, courage, stamina, fastidiousness and common sense right up until this beast took hold of her in her late sixties has turned her life on it's head if she did but know it.

To be continued...

Idle chatter

Must say hello to my sister in law by marriage Sheila [Saul] who is new to all things 'tinternet' and I know reads this blog as she phoned me up the other night with some encouragement and said so. Both her and her husband, Beryl's brother, Eric, where at our wedding.

I hope my revelations above were not to steamy Sheila.

Was it love at first sight?

Was it bollocks! It was lust at first sight and I'm sure that most long standing marriages started out this way.

It was late into the year of 1970 and the weather outside was cold, very cold but inside that pub it was warm and welcoming and, thankfully, the conversation was convivial as we had a smoke whilst imbibing our favourite tipples. No standing outside to smoke in all weathers in them days.

A vision in hot pants

Inside the pub  Mungo Jerry was extolling the virtues of women and the British summertime while brass monkeys were freezing their probverbial's off outside. We squaddies watched as the women danced while our egos picked out the woman of our desires...to use for one night only of course because when it comes to egos we men know they wont let us down, will they?

My eyes went straight to a vision in hot pants who was expertly dancing the evening away and I wanted more of her, my ego told me that it was possible after all.

Hot pants were all the rage in the late sixties and early seventies and with good reason, they accentuated the body beautiful and no woman can resist that that flatters them and their egos, yes, women have egos too, don't you know. So I did the manly thing and 'chatted her up' in between dances under the strains of that magical musical era that was the seventies.

Five foot two, eyes of blue. (Has anyone seen my gal.)

Ego aside even I was surprised when my then future wife kept coming back to me in between dancing with other men and I thought thoughts that only young men think...I'm in there!

Needless to say I wasn't 'in there' in any sense of the phrase and it took many months before I got even close to being 'in there.'

At that time Beryl worked as a chambermaid at the Windsor Castle Hotel and I resided at Victoria Barracks just around the corner.
That evening Beryl asked me if I was up for a party??? Bloody hell yes I was up for a party as it would keep me in the company of my desire. It was at that party that my ego went into overdrive.

At the party, in one of her friends rooms, Beryl was the life and soul of it and it was clear that she was having a good time, she talked and danced with everyone and my ego took a battering as I felt surplus to requirements and it was when she got up close and personal with an Italian waiter that I knew that I was not the center of her world tonight, and, on reflection, why should I be, we only met a few hours ago. I took my leave* of the party thinking I'd never meet her again...I was wrong, dead wrong.

It would be January '71' before I met her again, quite by chance.

addendum

Some readers of this blog may be excused for thinking "what the hell is this all to do with Alzheimers?" Well I will agree with you but I have a need to rationalise my possition through my past, and Beryl's past to try and fathom out the future, if that's possible. For example Beryl remembers nothing of our first meeting back then and she remembers nothing about our marriage in '71' but I have a need to remember for both of us. Please bear with me.

*Something happened before I left the party that shames me and I am reluctant to mention it but will do at a later date in this blog when I can summon up the courage.

To be continued...

Trials and trepidations of an Alzheimers carer

My first post on the subject of Alzheimer's.

The carer's perspective.

I do not intend this blog to be all about me, carer to my wife of 40 years this August the 14th and I am not trying to elicit sympathy for my plight as a 'carer' now that she has contracted Alzheimer's; my wife's care was a given when I first married her on the 14th of August 1971 and I don't need a piece of paper or a do-gooder (from the nanny state or from the street) to tell me where my duty lies.

On saying the above I do not intend to knock well meaning people who give me sound advice on how to proceed with Alzheimer's in relation to my wife's care nor do I wish to alienate myself from caring organisations that are solely there for the victims of this 'robber of a persons identity' and have no political agenda, because when a person or an organisation has a political agenda then their primary edict gets lost in the fug of the deception that is politics.

A bit of background goes a long way.

In 1970 I, a serving soldier in the Scots Guards, was stationed at Victoria barracks in Windsor, Berkshire. As an eighteen year old I was wet behind the ears and on reflection I thought I was the fookin' bees knees but still looked up to the older 'sweats' for guidance, which I soon realised was a massive mistake as your elders or 'betters' have their own take on life that is often the wrong path for you to follow but follow you do until it hits you that you are following the path of morons and future criminals.

One facet of a soldiers life was drink! Yes, the demon alcohol was our release from the endless drudgery that we had to endure; march, march, march, strip that weapon in xx number of minutes and rebuild it again etc, etc. As soldiers we would train for days and days and then drink ourselves stupid when we had that new fangled 'window' of opportunity but oh boy didn't we drink and smoke our way out out of that drudgery! I guess today we would be called binge drinkers and nicotine addicts.

So a soldiers 'down time' was going to the pub and getting, in modern terms, 'rat arsed whilst smoking numerous 'fags'' and occasionally the inevitable fight would follow but there was no 'stiff upper lip', I'll see you outside type of rubbish,  oh no, there would be 'glassings' and punches thrown and blood strewn carpets, but still the soldier would be up at the crack of dawn wondering what they did the night before and the inevitable consequences that would ensue.

So nothing new to me in this modern age of anti alcohol, anti drugs, anti smoking bull,  I've seen it all before and I'll see it all again but what I wont see is a coherent, fact based analysis that will make me a better carer of my wife and her and Alzheimer's! I hope I am proved wrong.

Amongst the garbage I found my diamond

By any standards it was a small pub and movement, when a few people were at the bar, was restricted somewhat, but still, there was other bars in the town of Windsor that we could go to later, the night was young after all...and then I saw her.

It was early evening when I first set eyes on my future wife Beryl, yes, I know, Beryl is not a modern name like Xander as my wife's hairdresser's daughter has called their child,  but to me that name, Beryl, is forever implanted in my mind as love and a gem in the firmament of my loves lost.

In the ensuing postings I will endevour to write about my fears for the future whilst talking about the present as I ramble on about the past as it relates to Beryl's dementia, I will try and show the funny side but will not lose sight of the seriousness of Alzheimer's...

To be continued...