A Trio of Events for Dementia Awareness Week

It's been a busy week in Suffolk for #DAW2022. As well as the cycling and cake eating - both activities which require equal amounts of stamina and intensity, albeit from different parts of the anatomy - Peter was involved in three separate awareness raising events.

On Tuesday he spoke at a live zoom meeting with some of Suffolk's librarians and associated staff. His presentation was, as ever, flawless but I was intrigued that he introduced a new element.

In trying to demonstrate how it actually felt to live with memory impairment, Peter described the sensations of sitting in a meeting, not knowing if he knew the people there, if he had been introduced to them earlier, what their names were and what the meeting was about. He explained that it was embarrassing to ask people to repeat themselves and so often he didn't. "I'm an intelligent guy," he said, "and I don't want to look foolish so sometimes I just keep quiet." This moved me and helped me to stand in his shoes, and I suspect it helped those listening too.

The second event was a presentation to Dementia Jersey (we had recorded it on the Sunday before) but I logged on last night to listen to it again and to take any questions from the participants. Peter's brief was to talk for twenty five minutes which he did and I could see from the comments which flashed up on the screen that those listening found the talk inspirational. (I suspect it was the talk which saw sales of both books increase as I noted on Amazon that both Slow Puncture and Walk with Me had shot back into the top 100 in their respective categories.)

The final event was a talk at Wickham Market library - the intention was for Peter to cycle there on his penny farthing but I fear the weather intervened and so we drove there. Despite the slightly disappointing attendance, Peter still was able to disseminate the message: "it IS possible to live well with dementia but, make no mistake, dementia is a pretty horrible, dark place to live alongside."