“I don’t think he wanted to participate in conversation because of that stigma thing.”
– by Paul Hitchmough
“Hello there, Paul here. It’s Friday, it’s a very bad day for me I must admit. I went out walking early. When I was walking home, there was this guy who I’ve known for years, he was walking his dog. I was delighted to see him as I haven’t seen him for a couple of years. Anyway he got about 50 yards from me, he knew it was me, just crossed over the road with his dog. I don’t think he wanted to participate in conversation because of that stigma thing, you know, that we’re all mad men and all this, so that was disappointing, that threw me a little bit. I felt like going over and making an issue of it but it’s happened before so I’m not going to bother. His loss, not mine.
So I went to the SURF meeting which was good It was very positive. We started off with 6 members, you know, in our group in which we discuss all the topics of dementia you know, how we can be helped and stuff and the carers, and now we’ve got 40 so it’s getting bigger and
bigger. It’s getting that big now that I’ve been nominated to find a cheap PA system somewhere. We can’t hear each other speak now when we get round the table, so we need to have some form of amplification so we can all hear what’s going on, so that was that, anyway I’m okay now.
I’ll see you… oh tomorrow we’re doing a short film, members of our group are doing a short film in town, in Liverpool city centre, just a little minute, two minutes each, I think it’s the final film that the film company are going to do about dementia within our group so that’s in the
morning. Bye now.”
