It is that time of year when even those of us with dementia have to make sure our tax affairs are in order.
Having formally retired, the bulk of my income these days comes taxed at source - but everything still has to be reported. I do as much as I can for charity and never charge, I think those who charge charities are reprehensible… although a couple of the pieces I have written about my diagnosis were paid for, so I have to pay tax on them.
I had my regular lunch with my friends Bob and Khalid which was fascinating, as we both felt strongly that we are in a period of profound turmoil and change, with Trump in the USA and Reform here in the UK. Despite my dementia, my medium to long-term memory is good. Bob was right when he said that it isn’t just politics, but that everything from retail to communications to TV (our own GB News included) was shifting - it really is ‘all change’.
Bob sees Musk as a Murdoch-like figure, fundamentally changing his own sector. With Musk it is automotive, space travel and payment systems. with Murdoch it was print media, TV news, and sports coverage. Both played politics in a big way too… What is the proverb about living in interesting times?
When I got home from lunch, I realised I’d misplaced my mobile phone. Sal had taken me to the restaurant and collected me, but I’d sat waiting for her in Bob’s car and left my phone on the floor (as the ‘find my phone app’ on my laptop later confirmed). He found it, and his delightful PA brought it to us.
You only realise, with or without dementia, how much you rely on them when you lose or misplace it. I even missed an invitation from GB News to come on to discuss one of the dementia reports.
We saw an article in our excellent local newspaper, the Hampshire Chronicle, about a free-range poultry farmer shutting up shop and asking the hen rehoming charity to help. We’ve said we'll take five and they arrive tomorrow. The new duck house/shed finally arrives on Monday… my patience has taken a hit but the ducks will be thrilled to be out of the stable block and I can’t wait to see them in the pond. It will make my spirits soar.
Alastair Stewart vents about the onerous admin of getting tax affairs in order when you have dementia in this week's Living With Dementia
GB NEWSThe mass media has been awash with stuff on dementia, with hard water and obesity being put in the frame as causes. I’m not obese and have never been concerned about our water’s hardness - save the cost of it being very hard on the bank balance. I hope and pray the ever-expanding size and role of the state is part of our current period of change and upheaval.
I really feel we work more for the huge state than for ourselves these days and I don’t recall ever having felt that so strongly before.
It has been quiet this week on the medical front, which is a welcome break.
Our dear friend Alastair Bruce dropped in for tea, always a joy and an education... He served with the Scots Guards in the Falklands conflict and holds an honorary position in the London Scottish Regiment and the Reservists who succeeded the Territorial Army.
He recently ended his term as Governor of Edinburgh Castle. He is the best commentator on state occasions on British TV working, as he does, on Sky. I mentioned last week the pleasure it gave me to read he'd been made a Companion of the Order of the Bath, he was already, like me, an OBE.
Over tea, I asked him the background of the Order, and he explained it was created by King George I in May 1725. Recipients of the Order are usually senior military officers.
There is a military list for them, which Alastair was proud to be on, or senior civil servants, while the rest of us are on a civil list. The ‘Bath’ bit derives from an elaborate medieval ceremony for preparing a candidate to receive his knighthood, of which ritual bathing (as a symbol of purification) was an element.
We are both ardent monarchists, believing a constitutional monarchy may not be perfect but better than a president. We reflected at length on how much we'd both enjoyed covering the Accession Council, which declared Charles King under the chairmanship of our friend Penny Mordaunt, then Lord President of the Council. We said goodbye and thanked him for dropping by. He’s a friend we both cherish and are lucky to have.
