Camden

The numbers are very tight because of the venue in Camden.

Do you remember when you used to prepare Cocoa Pops cakes for kids’ birthday parties? Yes, it’s at least that level of excitement and more.

But I am now extremely excited about our private get-together to talk about issues raised in my book ‘Living well with dementia‘. Thanks to Amazon (at last), this book for the time-being is available to order for next-day delivery.

Not being invited to my private book launch, however, has absolutely no significance.

The venue is very small, and it’s been very difficult co-ordinating it thus far.

The guests are: Beth Britton, Charmaine Hardy (and sons), Darren Gormley, Edana Minghella, Gill Phillips (‘Whose Shoes’), Rachel Niblock, James Murray-White, Jo Moriarty, Lee, Lucy Jane Marsters, Margaret Kilby, Marian Naidoo, Mike Clark, Neil Chadborn, Dr Peter Gordon, Shaun Naidoo, Simona Florio, Thomas Whitelaw, Vidal Andreas, Amanda Ramsay, Gillian Nineham, Shirley Ayres, Zoe Harris, Ken Howard, Sally Marciano, Jane Samuels and Tony Jameson-Allen.

I’ve never met some of my guests, but I know them all well through Facebook or Twitter.

It has the feeling of a wedding reception in fact.

I wonder if I should get some special badges for what is effectively a #tweetup?

Indeed, I am looking forward to thanking Charmaine in person for permission to use the photography of her poppy – which was chosen by my publishers out of the ones proposed to them.

I’m also hoping Dr Mitul Mehta and family will be able to ‘drop in’. Despite being a Senior Lecturer at the world-famous Institute of Psychiatry, in their neuroimaging division, Mitul found my discussion of the problems in early cognitive diagnosis of dementia helpful. I also made him read my book recently!

I am excited that Tommy Whitelaw has accepted an invitation to come from Scotland. The distance is perhaps prohibitively long, but in any case I will be massively singing Tommy’s praises. Tommy is genuine. And he’s also a Glaswegian! An amazing contributor, who’s made a massive paradigm shift through his groundbreaking work with Alliance Scotland.

Norman McNamara, in the spirit of all good awards ceremonies, ‘can’t be there’ (the distance from Torbay is prohibitively long.) Nonetheless, Norman is recording a message on YouTube which I hope to be playing in our book launch. It’s impossible to give an account for Norman’s unique accomplishments in this area.

Not only has Norman got a huge amount of organic goodwill and love for his ‘Purple Angel Ambassadors’, but Norman has brought about a discussion on the potential merits of GPS trackers to mitigate against wandering. Whatever one’s precise views, which tend to be always sophisticated and deeply felt, this debate is much needed in my view. I am trying to make suitable arrangements for Purple Angels themselves to be represented in person.

It would be very early for Kate Swaffer to ‘Skype’-in, for Sunday morning her time in Adelaide. I am thinking of recording message by Kate especially for my guests. Kate, living with a dementia, is one of the most well liked and respected advocates for dementia internationally.