George on the importance of working at one’s own pace.

Hi, this is George in Shropshire out on my morning walk and a blackbird in the background and of course wind, quite a lot of wind at the moment.

So I wanted to talk about something I just realised (I mean I have thought about it before) when you have dementia or brain disease and your brain just, well parts of your brain stop working. Tiny parts perhaps to begin with (strong wind across mike) and certainly in my case, early on, I got, I mean whether it`s linked or not, I got very slow in my brain processes, which was enormously helped by Donepezil the wonder drug with early onset the early stage.

But you do realise and I`m realising it more and more now with lock down, that it`s essential to work at the pace that suits you. To move, to do things at a slower pace if you are feeling slower on a particular day. Like today for me.

One of the worst things and most stressful things to happen is that someone else or others around you want you to do things at their pace, and you just can`t keep up and you don`t want to and you just, well it can cause implosion fairly swiftly. We just give up, fog up. There`s another thing and then of course you get the expectations of the other half and the stress that causes both of you. It can go from bad to worse.

What on my walks and gardening and, you know, growing trees, growing plants and things, walking around watching the crops grow slowly over the months. Looking at the tress that have been here for, I don`t know a hundred and fifty two hundred years probably, these oaks.

If you think about it and just imagine they just stand here, they don`t do anything except grow (wry laugh) .They don`t do anything, they don`t have a brain, they just…grow.

The only thing that stresses them is lack of water, and oaks actually do pretty well with lack of water. But it does remind you time (pause ) is slow and continues. Sometimes we think it`s, and as we get older, I certainly think it goes faster and faster. That`s because I lose track of time a bit so it seems to disappear rather fast. One day in one week cor it`s amazing how quickly Any Questions comes round on a Friday evening

I don`t usually listen to it but it is something that`s always marked my weekend. I used to listen to it ten past one on a Saturday, I rarely do now, but sometimes.

So the weeks fly bye but some things don`t change, and nature is that. There`s no hurry. So this is a long way of saying, very long winded probably saying, way of saying you have got to slow down, you have got to do things at your own speed, and that might be faster on one day, slower on another, and not have a crammed full list of things you think you got get done, because you wont get them done.

Just do whatever suits you at a particular time on a particular day, and if that, for me, is making a whistle, doing some crafting (pause) carving or writing a blog or gardening or just looking at the roses, walking the dog, very occasionally washing the car. That really is, I did it for the first in about two years the other day (laugh), ridiculous.

You just let life flow because actually, yeah whats that saying? To adapt a saying, `the graveyards are full of people who thought they didn`t have time`. (big chuckle). Well maybe we don`t have enough time to do all the things we want to do but you have got to abandon that list, that bucket list that you are desperate to get through because when you make plans God laughs at them, or the gods laugh at them whoever they might be.

So if you have been diagnosed with dementia just take your time. If you are working in the field of dementia tell people just to take their time and work at their own pace. Don`t tell them to take life slowly, don`t tell them to stop doing things, just say you`ll have days when you don`t feel like doing anything and you`ll have days when you want to do loads. Just go with the flow.

I know if I do too much on one day I may have a very tired day the next day, but I don`t always and it`s just unpredictable so there is no hard and fast rule. The worst thing you can say to people is don`t take risks (sarcastic laugh), yeah had that one, don`t take risks don`t do too much, well that`s just absolutely facilely stupid. You can’t say when you are going to get tired. We all know we with brain disease, that the fog can descend literally without notice. It happened to me two days ago.

In fifteen minutes I went from feeling fine to feeling completely grogged out.
So that`s it I think for today. My little piece of very (chuckle) simple, not wisdom, just learning.

Have a good day. Keep going out there to see the natural world. Bye Bye.