Recently, I had the pleasure of returning to Woodbrooke, formerly the home of George Cadbury and now a Quaker conference centre in Birmingham.
A taxi took me to the railway station and with my noise cancelling headphones removing the cacophony of noise surrounding me I made it onto the train.
Naturally we were delayed getting to Birmingham, engineering works at Derby causing a stop start progress.
Arriving in Birmingham, later than planned, I took a taxi to Woodbrooke, where the receptionist greeted me with a smile and her broad Brummie accent, seemingly recognising me from my previous visits.
I left my coat and bag in the luggage store as it wasn’t yet time to check in and I got a coffee and went and sat in the Garden.
As I sat in the garden with my coffee, it was windy and spitting with rain but I didn’t care, it was time to relax and enjoy the wonderful garden.
I had left Dementia at the door with the judgements and negative perceptions, it would sneak in over my time there but would be sent away like a naughty child.
I bumped in to Philly Hare and Rachel Litherland from Innovations in Dementia CIC who were having a meeting there, Philly would be staying on but Rachel would be off to London later that day.
After lunch, coffee in hand it was back to the garden, the sun had come out and it was quite warm out of the wind.
I sat and relaxed waiting for the arrival of more of my wonderful friends who I would probably have never met if it wasn’t for my Dementia.
From 5pm they began to arrive and by supper time we all gathered in the dining room to catch up.
After supper came the rehearsal for the “Dementia Diaries Live” performance at the Young Dementia UK conference the next day.
It began calmly and seriously…
Then the humour began
…until it ended in a fit of giggles.
Sadly, no one was up to taking photos of our “Director of Laughter” Wendy Mitchell leading the rehearsal into chaos and gradually one by one we retired for the night.
It was a wonderful end to the day reader, people with Dementia can enjoy themselves.
Tomorrow would see us at the Young dementia UK conference.
