crafts – Handbagwarrior; verbal ramblings

This is my story in my own words with the help of journalist Penny Bell who is creating a series about dementia, you can follow her on Twitter here. Or view Linkedln profile here.

Discovering Dementia, Season 1, episode 3 Gill’s Story

I recommend you also listen to the first two episodes:

The first episode is with her Mum who was diagnosed with dementia. This is lovely to listen to.

The second episode is recorded at the Alzheimer’s show held in London. This will give you an idea of the shows that are worth a visit to learn everything about dementia, for people with dementia, family and carers.

I know Penny has more to come. It was fun working together with her during the recording, especially as she came along with me to the YPWD (Young People with Dementia) gardening group which I love.

Groups for younger people with dementia are very important because it stops isolation if you live alone, enables fun activities which are age appropriate. Younger people with dementia have different needs to elderly people. We come from a different era, singing groups will focus on 60’s and 70’s music, nothing like having a good old sing song to ABBA and the like! Not that I sing, in fact I have no singing voice at all, when I try to sing a weird soundless screech emerges that is not very pleasant. If I am ever required to sing my miming abilities knows no bounds.

Sadly there are not enough groups that support younger people living with dementia throughout the county. Especially groups that provide a wide range of activities such as walking groups, Kayaking, Art workshops, Poetry groups, gardening groups, furniture recycling… the YPWD offers all of these and more in the West Berkshire area.

Creative art

Gardening, weeding the sweet peas

December sunshine — Early December at Kings Bromley Marina

Oh my goodness it has been ages since I have last posted here. I will need to bring everything up to date as I remember it.

Well, we returned back to the marina at the beginning of September both feeling exhausted but satisfied with the trip. We both remarked how our dis-abilities made the activity of locking and boating harder this year than before.

Falling back into the routine of living in the marina was disturbingly seamless. With the boat always throwing up some maintenance conundrum, the first was the calorifier (hot water tank) splitting and leaking into the boat. The cupboard it was sitting in had to be taken apart to remove the tank, followed by a trip to various chandlers to buy a new tank plus an assortment of brass and plastic fittings to create a twisted maze of new pipework. New stop taps had to be put in, expansion tank, and the tank itself. The whole process took a week to complete with Mr Hsg trying to fold himself into the smallest spaces to complete the job. Thank goodness he is more than capable of DIY plumbing, carpentry, and electrical works, with some engineering. Canal boats are expensive creatures demanding money being thrown at them with distressing regularity. Following that he moved the water pump to sit underneath the kitchen units, to keep warmer in winter months so that it cuts down the delay of water flowing from the tap.

I have focused my photography and creating some cards. I made some cards showing various aspects of the marina and took them to the office to see if they were interested in buying them. Brilliant, they wanted them and more! So, now I have been supplying them with Christmas Cards of the marina, people love to see their boats on a card and they have quickly sold out.

I would love to find a way of selling them elsewhere but struggle with trying to sort it out. I thought about setting up a website but my computing experience and knowledge is disappearing and I have struggled to sort it out. I will have to look at ebay or Etsy if I can figure out the logistics of it all.

Update on my Alzheimer’s – I have finally in these past two weeks, seen my new consultant at Derby Royal Hospital and have begun Rivastigmene tablets. I can feel myself withdrawing from anything social a little. Its not that I want to, it’s almost like a fear of going out, and I have no idea why. I have to choose the books that I read a little more carefully as I have struggled to work out some of the story lines in some which is a bit of a pain because I do enjoy reading.

I must try and post more regularly to keep my motivation going.