26 October 2025

Dementia mittens

I have always known how to knit, but never really knitted much in life. As a small child, I used to watch my grandmother unravel huge skeins of wool into more manageable balls. My grandmother was a good knitter - I suppose they were in those days as they made a lot of  their own clothes or made do. She taught me to knit basic things.  At school we had to knit squares in our break times to make into blankets for the homeless shelter near our school. In my twenties and thirties I knitted the occasional baby clothes for friends or family, but didn't really consider myself a pro.

A few months before the covid pandemic started in 2020, a Swiss friend of my Brighton friend visited her, while I was also there, and told us of her husband's dementia and his restlessness. The conversation developed into ways of maybe calming him, as he was quite agitated. The topic of dementia mittens came up. They are like knitted mittens in bright colours and decorated with things like ribbons and buttons for the person to fiddle with. I was asked if I might be able to make one for her. I researched what they looked like online and even found a pattern to work to, so I set to and knitted my very first one which I then sent on to the friend in Switzerland in early 2020.

Once the covid pandemic struck, I was housebound during the lockdowns on my own. Life was very boring apart from the occasional walk around the block. Kay had moved out and was was placed at the expense of the NHS in the Holiday Inn at Gatwick (see here) close to the hospital where she worked so as not to pass any hospital covid germs on to me as she was working in Intensive Care with dying Covid patients and I was classed as "vulnerable". So, in my newly acquired loneliness, I started knitting more dementia mittens. I ordered the wool and ribbons and other decorations online and would sit watching TV, knitting away. It helped me feel less guilty about watching too much TV.   It would take about a week to knit one just in the evenings and then decorate it. To start with I would hand them over to local care homes or charity shops and before I knew it I had a production line going!

In recent years I have made them for the foodbank charity shop, where I volunteer, and they have been flying off the shelves with requests from customers for more. To date I must have knitted well over 400 of them. Here are pictures of some of them for you to get an idea of what they look like. You can insert your hands inside the muffs and there are ribbons and buttons inside too to fiddle with.  I have been told that hospitalised dementia patients use them too to avoid fiddling with catheters on their hands or arms and pulling them out. Ouch!

some recent ones



Some of the many accumulating during the covid lockdown

19 October 2025

Dementia

Back in the middle of summer, I visited J, my sister-in-law (Greg's sister) in the Midlands. I haven't seen her since August 2024 and do try to visit when I can to catch up on family news, see J's  daughter and now 22-month old granddaughter, as well as J's 79-year-old partner M. M sadly has dementia and for the last year or so has been living in a care home. 

His decline was gradual, first diagnosed about 6 years ago. At first, it was just a case of some forgetfulness, but gradually worsened. It is a horrible disease for both the patient and their family. J is very practical and had realised a few years in advance that living in a bungalow with washable floors would be much easier than their big house with carpets. The bungalow is situated in a small hamlet in the middle of nowhere comprising 11 houses. No shop and no street lights, but does boast a very small postbox inserted into a wall. Their neighbour opposite is a farmer who owns the surrounding fields.

M had run his own business, but gradually that was wound up and all paperwork put into their attic. He gradually became incapable of driving his van and that was given up and his license rescinded. He would forget what he had eaten 5 minutes ago and would watch a whole football match on TV and then an hour later deny he had ever seen the game. He would wander out into the fields with his beloved Border Collie dog and forget how to get home again.  Very often the farmer opposite would find him, particularly when the dog came home without him. When the dog was finally put down because of cancer, M did not really register this and some six months later was asking where the dog was.

J had often considered putting a tracker on M to help her find him if he wandered off, but he was stubborn and refused to wear one and changed his coats so often, it was difficult for J to judge what he would be wearing to secrete it on him. He would spend his day out in the country lane nearby obsessed with picking up leaves or pulling up dandelions, even though it was not his property. He would come even more alive in the middle of the night, wanting to access his business papers and nothing would quieten him until he climbed up into the attic. J was getting next to no sleep yet having to function during the day to the care of feeding him, clothing him and watching over him.

In the winter of 2023/24 he managed to get out of the house at 3am in the middle of the night. It was cold and snowing and, as J had locked the front door and hidden the key,  he had managed to get out at the back through the French doors of the lounge and round the side of the house. With no street lights he had become even more confused and didn't know where he was, so thankfully knocked on the first front door he came to, namely their own front door. J was wakened to someone pounding on the door to find him standing there in pyjamas and slippers in the snow, asking if she knew where he was!! 

It was at that point that J realised it was not safe for him to be at home any more and also she was exhausted from the constant worry and sleepless nights she was getting, as he paced the bungalow day and night. With much deliberation and guilt, and on the advice of the Admiral nurses who are experts on dementia, she put him into a care home last year. It has not been easy and her guilt exists to this day as she feels she has let him down. But, as one professional said, he was no longer a one-person job and she could not have continued without her own health failing. She is, after all, over 70 herself.

His fascination (or is it impatience) with things on the ceiling that blink (like smoke detectors or fire alarms) has seen him have several narrow escapes, as he tries to dismantle them. According to the care home staff, he once moved an armchair from the corridor, put it on his bed and then attempted to climb onto the bed and then the wobbly armchair to dismantle the smoke alarm above his bed. He has climbed onto the toilet seat to do the same in his ensuite bathroom and again in the communal dining room where he stood on a dining chair in front of a ceiling-to-floor window two floors up from the ground. The staff found him just in time as the chair started to topple. Falling through a plate glass window two storeys up doesn't bear thinking about.

When J visits him (four times a week) he barely recognises her now and treats her as if she is one of the residents. He will chat to her for a few minutes and then wander off to sit with someone else. She has even seen him more than once holding hands with a female resident he has become friendly with. He, like the others, wanders into other's rooms and helps himself to their clothes. Once a visitor's coat when missing from where he had left it and uproar was caused as they tried to find it, as it had his car keys in it and the man couldnt leave without it. The staff found M in his room wearing it and retrieved the coat and keys, so the visitor could go on their way. Once hungry, M forced open a locked cupboard in the communal kitchen and helped himself to a dishwasher tablet to eat. Fortunately a nurse came running in time before he had swallowed it. There are so many episodes I could mention that would make a good comedy series if it weren't such a serious topic.

We have no idea how much longer this disease will take to progress to its final stage. It is a strain on J and the immediate family as the money to pay for the care home is astronomical and eating at any savings, not to mention the sheer ignorance of how long this will go on for. He is effectively lost as her partner but still alive inside what resembles a now worn-out body. I have read that dementia is the biggest killer these days and has overtaken cancer or heart disease. It is quite frightening to see the demise of a man who was once a successful businessman and had all his faculties. It is quite frightening to think that it could, on the law of averages, happen to those close to us or even us.

12 October 2025

Imagine

Imagine.

Imagine a country in civilised Europe.

Imagine a country in civilised Europe where the usual major political parties are losing votes, as nobody deems them competent any more.

Imagine this country's population targeting a section of the community with cultural differences, blaming them for all its problems and wanting rid of them.

Imagine a far right wing political party stepping into the limelight and overtaking the major political parties in votes.

Imagine this far right party promising change for the better, trashing what the other main political parties stood for and promising to get rid of anyone who doesn't think like them or are the cause of the problems.

Imagine street demonstrations unfurling their nationalistic flags and symbols, hailing this far right party as amazing whilst the minority cower in fear.

Are you thinking of Germany in 1933?





Or The United Kingdom in a year or two?




Just imagine.

Be careful what you wish for.

It could easily happen here.

05 October 2025

Pin cushion

It's that time of year, when the medical profession want to use me as target practice. In other words, it's annual vaccination time.  Yesterday I had a flu injection. Tomorrow it will be the covid one and, as all good things come in threes, I'm getting part 2 of my shingles vaccination in a few weeks' time. I'd better not drink any fluids or I'll look like this....