Simon's 1,718km in 17/18

It's Friday. It's the weekend. Treat Yo Self. But how does one treat one's self? You could have that extra G&T: why not, it’s Friday. Kebab on the way home? Why not, you probably won't remember the bad taste. How about a bike ride, yoga in the field or an evening run instead? Isn't that really treating yourself? Remember we can't really change anyone else. We can advise, influence and guide, but we can't physically change how other people think or act: we can only change ourselves. So be honest when you say something is a treat: what would your body say? Do something nice to your body this weekend. Or don't. It's your body. All I have to do is be happy with my evening run, which I am.

Happy Father's Day dad Enough said

I won't go into the details of how it started (perhaps on another post), but on our return from the holiday we started the process of community care for dad and he had assessments and carers visits within a week. We could possibly debate (needlessly) for hours about whether we should have made the call earlier.  Truth is, the break in May brought to light two main things: 1 - the decline cannot be predicted and can often accelerate.  In the last 24, 12, 6, 3 months, dad's cognitive and social functions and mobility had decline to a point and while I did not expect them to improve or even stay still, being with him much closer that week showed me that even on a week by week basis the relentless decline is more and more obvious.  Whether it's his ability to move from wheelchair to sofa or ability to engage in conversation, its hard to know how things are going to progress in the coming weeks/months.  An easy comparison is looking at how he walked around their new flat

I was never a good footballer. At the height of my 'career' I was an ok bowler on the cricket pitch. Otherwise I've not been very athletic in my life. One thing that I continued to draw on was watching sporty-types I know with exercise-induced injuries; not in some sadistic way, but it re-enforced my (probably ill-informed) belief that exercise makes you ill. Simply put, I justified not taking exercise too seriously lest I became injured and couldn't exercise. Obviously I knew I was wrong, but I didn't appreciate how wrong I was. I've now come to learn that once in an exercise routine, any injury can have an impact on both physical and mental health.  A day after returning from holiday I stubbed my toe on the highchair.  I didn't give it too much thought at the time as was feeding Harry, but later in the evening the bruising became apparent (if interested - why wouldn't' you be? - see proof at foot of page). Over the next week the

May has been holiday time for the last few years and 2017 was no exception.  Dad's condition earlier in the year made it difficult to know whether to go away separately or as one big family.  As it turned out, shortly after the diagnosis of mixed dementia in February, we booked a cottage in East Sussex for 10 of us, 4 generations of the family from great-grand parents down to the youngest, my son Harry who is just 8 months old. No one knows what the future will bring but most of us accepted that this could well be our last family holiday with all of us involved and could well be dad's last chance at a holiday. I write this now a few weeks after the holiday and I'm still happy that it was the right thing to do, to try to bring us all together.  Did every single person have their most amazing holiday ever? Probably not, but hopefully most of us brought something away that we can draw on in the coming months and years. Let's start at the beginning.