Alastair Stewart: How my beloved animals are helping me live with dementia

Horses are our two younger sons' business and we cherish them - new and old.

I have also made it clear since my dementia diagnosis that they've all become even more important to me and my wellbeing.

The feeding and watering rituals, the exercise and just watching them do their thing: it all lifts my spirits and is part of a helpful pattern of duties to remember to do and to get right.

I ‘do’ the dogs, ducks and chickens while my wife Sally ‘does’ the horses.

To lose one, as we recently did, is a blow to us all, even thought it is a very elderly mare. Our lovely equestrian vet did all she could - but in the end it was to no avail.

However, on the upside, we took delivery of five new Indian Runner ducks, surplus to the needs of a lovely man not far from here... they replaced the six that either did a ‘runner’ or flew off.

A fox may have had them but there was no evidence of that, which from sad experience with chickens there usually is. Our duck pond area is fenced and the chickens are locked up in hen-houses at night...

I stopped driving as soon as my dementia diagnosis was confirmed and cancelled my insurance. The car I used to drive is tucked away in the garage.

This week I got a letter from the DVLA telling me I’d been fined £100 for having an uninsured car!

Our ex Met PC son said it was a new one on him. I have now registered the car for a SORN which should resolve the matter, but sorting it all out with DVLA - as someone with dementia - was like doing a series of hill starts.

They are better online but impossible to speak to; this needs sorting out.

To keep an eye on my bank account deposits and withdrawals, I asked my personal bank manager how I could give access to my eldest son who lives in Winchester.

My bank manager ignored my emailed enquiry so my frustrated (but ever helpful) son went into the branch in Winchester and we now know what to do and how to do it.

For folk with dementia, bank communication is crucial and very difficult.

Ignored emails are poor, and unanswered phone calls unforgivable, especially in this era of scams.

I greatly enjoyed the US elections and thought GB News did really well for a first-time effort.

All the mainstream broadcasters embarrassed themselves and continue to do so with much of their reporting. I remember doing US elections when Clinton won and when Kerry didn’t. Even then we had lefties at ITN convinced Kerry would win to the bitter end.

When Bill Clinton was nominated again after scandals and allegations of misdemeanours, I asked a democrat in Arkansas why they’d gone for him again. “We knew he was a bum when we first picked him, but he was our bum,” they said.

How I am enjoying the embarrassing debacle over what the British Foreign secretary David Lammy said about President Elect Trump.

It rumbles on but it is not the first example of Labour White House tensions.

I was in DC when Neil Kinnock arrived to see Ronald Reagan. Kinnock was a nuclear disarmer and the sworn political enemy of Reagan’s close chum Margaret Thatcher.

MORE FROM 'LIVING WITH DEMENTIA'

• Alastair Stewart on 'bonkers' Budget decision, his grandsons, and fond Barbara Windsor memory
• Dementia is upsetting, challenging and difficult - but it's not the end of the world
• If you’ve got dementia remember, you've pretty much always got friends

My friend Charles Clarke - then Kinnock’s Chief of Staff - smoothed it over. But it was tense.

At a British Embassy reception, the late Glenys Kinnock approached me and said I looked very smart, then flicked my suit jacket open to reveal a Jaeger label.

She said: "We can’t afford that sort of stuff." It was crass rather than rude but a memorable moment in the clumsy days of the Kinnocks who, of course, never reached Number 10.

As ever, I reacted in the best way you can - I laughed it off.