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This 27 message thread spans 2 pages:  < <   1  2 > >  
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Cornelia at 23:48 on 12 February 2009
    Inventive, Naomi - I think that's how my husband operates most of the time.

    Oh,one thing my brain does is confuse units of time - so I'll say 'next week' instead of 'next year' or 'tomorrow' instead of 'yesterday'. That can be really weird. 'OK, I'll meet you at three o'clock yesterday'. I read somewhere it's something to do with retrieval taking longer with age because the memory cells hold such a lot of data. We need a facility for clearing the cache.

    Sheila

  • Re: Sir Terry
    by NMott at 01:15 on 13 February 2009
    I'll say 'next week' instead of 'next year' or 'tomorrow' instead of 'yesterday'. That can be really weird.


    I've not come across that one before.

    My mum does the very common: running through a list of family names before she gets to the right one - and that list often started with the dog's name while 'Gus' the mastiff was still around. Probably because that's the name she used most often during the day, and so was at the forefront of her memory.
    In my case the word gets misdirected to the visual cortex, so I can visualise the object I want, but can't redirect the thought towards whichever part of the brain holds the dictionary so as to find the correct word for it.
    I could draw a picture of it far more easily than I could say the word.


    - NaomiM


    <Added>

    I can also write stuff down far more easily that I could say it., the pathway goes directly from my inner thoughts to my fingers; if I try to record my thoughts onto a dictaphone, I very quickly loose the thread.
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Cornelia at 09:41 on 13 February 2009
    Wow! You really are good at describing the nitty gritty - and observing it in the first place, of course.

    Yes, I can often find something I've mislaid by visualising where I last saw it, or track down a quotation by remembering its position on a page. My husband rus through the children's names like your mother does - we don't have any pets to complicate matters, thank goodness - but more often he'll just say the wrong name and I guess from the context.

    A friend of mine who lives on the coast runs a group for aphasics, usually recovering from strokes. Their disabilities vary, as you can imagine, but I was initially taken aback when she announced on one visit that she'd asked them all round for tea.

    I was lecturing an eigthy-year old friend of mine, a bit of a recluse, about the value of getting out to meet people to improve her communication skills. She'd been saying that she didn't understand how myself and another pal could keep up all the talk. Wwe were waiting in for the gas man at the time. When I advised practice she said, 'Hmmm- it didn't do Iris Murdoch much good!'

    But I think there's a big difference between gradual age-related aphasia and Altzheimer's or strokes. That's why I think, too, that the media exposure for Terry Pratchett is a risky road for him to follow.

    Altzheimer's can be/usually is very destructive of the personality. It annoys me that Jack Woolley in The Archers is presented as a lovable old geezer who just can't remember people and events and is grateful when people remind him.

    Sheila

  • Re: Sir Terry
    by NMott at 16:36 on 13 February 2009
    It annoys me that Jack Woolley in The Archers is presented as a lovable old geezer who just can't remember people and events and is grateful when people remind him.


    Yes, that does give entirely the wrong impression of what it's like to live with someone with alzheimers or simply senile dementia. My father has dementia and the symptoms are exacerbated by him not eating so his blood sugar drops, starving the brain. But it's a vicious circle because he gets worked up to a state of paranoia by media scares - especially ones associated with food. And is currently avoiding pork, (incl. bacon and sausages which he's practically lived on in recent years), and beef after the dioxin scares in various parts of Europe; avoids salad and vegetables because of pesticides....it gets to the stage where there's not much left that he will eat. And he's like a bear with a sore head when he's hypoglycemic - argumentative, irritable, unsociable. I don't know how my mum puts up with it.
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Jem at 17:35 on 13 February 2009
    To be honest they have had a few episodes with Jack turning the house upside down and having a go at Peggy. Didn't he lock her in a room a while ago. But i don't think they can keep repeating those sort of scenes because The Archers isn't really that sort of drama is it - we still listen to it for comfort. I wish bloody Shula - self-righteous prig - would just get over herself and convert to Catholicism. Who cares about her moral dilemma?
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Cornelia at 01:04 on 14 February 2009
    I dislike all the characters because they don't have any cultural life but don't miss it.

    Sheila
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Jem at 16:54 on 14 February 2009
    I'd never thought about that before - Phil has his music, I guess but they do in the main seem like country people with country pursuits. Don't you like Jill? Surely you can't have anything against her? And what about Clarrie? It's Susan Carter and Shulah who are my bugbears. I also like Lilian.
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Cornelia at 17:34 on 14 February 2009
    No, I think they are all pernicious You know the programme was started as government propaganda to tell farmers when to start pulling their carrots? It seems to tune in with some deep-seated English fantasy about country living. I's sooner cut my throat than have to meet up with any of them. (I may be prejudiced because I was once trapped in Lincolnshire for three years.)

    My main gripe, though, concerns the awful cliched writing that goes with the awful cliched characters.I sometimes think if anyone else says 'You've got a lot on your plate' I'll kick the radio round the kitchen.

    Do you refer to Phil's organ playing? I don't as a rule count music as culture - not playing it, anyway, and this lot proves it.

    Sheila

  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Jem at 21:57 on 14 February 2009
    Oh, Sheila! I know what you mean but my Sundays wouldn't be Sundays without it.
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Cornelia at 23:58 on 14 February 2009
    It's a programme I love to hate - like 'Winner's Dinners' in the Sunday Times. There isn't a single character I like because if they aren't actually one of the family or landed gentry they're either fore-lock tuggers or known reprobates. There aren't even any of those any more- a bit non-PC these days, I suppose. I've got a book somewhere called 'The Anti-Archers Handbook'

    They never have any really exciting episodes anymore, like when the stables caught fire and Phil's first wife Christine died trying to save the horses. Do you remember how Shula and Kenton got their stupid names? Maybe before your time.

    There's a 'Hancock's Half Hour' where Tony plays Old Ben Merryweather ( based on Walter Gabriel).He gets written out of the script for improvising, so at his last gasp he describes how the whole village is crossing a field and falls down an old mineshaft. Wish that would really happen.

    Sheila

  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Jem at 11:41 on 15 February 2009
    I'd love to know how Shulah and Kenton got those daft names! I think I remember the Tony Hancock sketch!
  • Re: Sir Terry
    by Cornelia at 12:55 on 15 February 2009
    Seems to me the The Archers deserves a whole new topic, so I've started one.

    Sheila
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