It is a year since the Parkinson’s community lost one of its strongest advocates, a full year since Tom Isaacs passed away unexpectedly early one May morning. I remember the phone call from Helen, mid-morning. She said hello and asked
Club cricket – one from the vault
Written in 2011 but still tickles me… For reasons that are generous but entirely unfathomable, at least to me, the last few Saturdays have found me not only playing cricket, but captain of our club’s 4th XI. The Bells Yew
Speaking in tongues
There are times when I like to delude myself that I am a serious writer, that I can string words together in ways that touch readers. I like to feel that my words have impact, that they demand reaction. This
Winner takes all
At first sight, the pharmaceutical industry seems readily understandable. There is a need for drugs to treat illness. Drug companies collectively provide these treatments. And as time progresses they produce better treatments. This is big business. Take Parkinson’s: the estimated
A matter of life and death
I’m reading two books at the moment. The first is Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. The second is When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. Both, in different ways, tackle the subject of death and try to contextualise the experience.
Messing up the bucket list
Every so often I revisit my bucket list. I remove activities that seem less interesting and re-prioritise the remainder. Often I just simply delete existing activities. If I haven’t got round to doing them in the first 60 years of
The Joy of Science
I was not always a person with Parkinson’s. For more than two decades, I was a scientist. Better than that, I was a neuroscientist. And better still, a research neuroscientist. And to be a research neuroscientist in the 1980s and
Let no day be wasted
I don’t know about you but most of my New Year resolutions are broken fairly swiftly. In the case of those involving chocolate, fairly instantaneously. My children have even taken to hiding the Bendicks bittermints from me, fearful of their
Arizona Mike
In downtown Grand Rapids Michigan, opposite a hipster coffee shop somewhere around the intersection of Monroe and Lyon you will find him. Usually alone. Sometimes in conversation with other street people. Mostly just whittling wood all day long, fashioning canes
3AM in Michigan
It’s 8 am. Which would be fine if I was where the 8 AM was, if you see what I mean. Kent, in the south-east of England. But I am in Grand Rapids Michigan where the time is 3 AM.