Which me was I this week?

Wendy Mitchell, a woman diagnosed with early onset dementia, writes a regular blog #whichmeamitoday ‘That’s dementia for you,’ she wrote this week ‘Just no telling one day to the next.’ Well, dear Wendy, I know just what you mean. I used to think it when my mother was alive: that memory was a little like the ballast in a boat. Take it out from its position, hidden below the waterline, and the boat becomes unstable, heeling dangerously from side to side at the slightest puff of wind in the sails. Mum’s moods used to swing; I never knew what to expect. Wendy Mitchell, on the few occasions that I’ve met has (and also from reading her excellent book Someone I Used to Know) has seemed a reassuringly steady and equable person - but I still think her blog title is quite brilliant — and far more widely applicable than to the vagaries of dementia.

Which me was I this week? I hope I am still the person who is writing a book about the RNVSR — In Memoriam is my working title and I am slowly reading through Richard Woodman’s grimly impressive The Real Cruel Sea — merchant seamen in the Battle of the Atlantic. It is the most astoundingly detailed work — not a paragraph should be missed. That has begun and ended each day but between I have lurched from John’s Campaigner, to book festival supporter, to amateur music commentator and prospective river magazine editor.

Probably the head line event was Tuesday’s launch of the new John’s Campaign booklet. This was supported by the Malnutrition Task Force at Age UK and in spite of all that weather and virus infections could do to prevent people attending, people arrived in London from all over the country and had a thoroughly convivial and constructive day. I wrote the booklet with plenty of help from people who work in care homes and fantastic type-setting assistance from Bertie. He used some of the drawings Claudia Myatt contributed to Please Tell Me and Please Tell Me More (thanks Claudia) and the result is (I think) simple and charming as well as (I hope) useful. Plenty of good ideas for next steps.

A fascinating morning on Thursday at Waltham Abbey Church looking ahead to the Waltham Singers March concert Laudes Organi (March 14th). This is part of Waltham Abbey’s year long organ festival celebrating the restored and enlarged pipe organ. I’m writing programme notes on Kodaly, Dupre, Parry, Vaughan Williams (AND MORE) but what I really wanted to do was understand how the organ actually works; all those stops, pistons, pedals, divisions and ranks. I’d found a quote that describes the organ as the most complex mechanism ever devised before the Industrial Revolution. And now I can believe it.

Also during the week Bertie was putting finishing touches to the new Dixiefields website - starting to look ahead to July — and I was corresponding with the indefatigable Meg Reid, director of the Felixstowe Book Festival which is the last weekend in June (you don’t want to go to Glastonbury, honest!). On Sunday morning (June 28th) I’ll be talking to Salley Vickers about her latest novel Grandmothers, to Orwell Prize director Professor Jean Seaton about the great man’s life and legacy and then to Nick Cottam, author of Life on the Deben, about my all-time favourite river. Which me will I be that morning, I wonder?