Yesterday was Lila-day and I was sitting with her doing… whatever, when she just suddenly said; apropos of nothing; ‘grand-daughter’ and laughed. But said it properly, beautifully (she’s a posh bird, or will be once she masters ‘L’ and ‘G’… ‘J’… ‘K”….‘Z’…). And I said, ‘yes?’ And she repeated it as if the word itself was sufficient. Which, to a grandfather, it kind of is. It was the randomness of it which was particularly pleasing. But as Lila speaks most of the time (like her MOTHER!) its not uncommon to just put an idea, or a word, ‘out there’, for discussion. And her vocabulary is awesome. Yet unfortunately is not matched by her powers of pronunciation. Not yet. So when Lila speaks to me its fine, we chat, we chew the fat, we shoot the breeze and there is a minor stumble or two at some of the words, both hers and mine, I’m fairly fluent in ‘Lila’. It’s only when others come along and I realise she needs an interpreter. She’s 2.5 years old. Bright enough to form arguments, which she does, but not ready to incorporate unnecessary consonants into her speech. Don’ need it, as she would say.

And there’s hope for us all. All of us that is who are concerned about forgetting… errr… hmmm… forgetting things! Yes, that’s it. Some people do, I’m told. And those who do worry about ‘the future’ even though the entire planet might be gone in a puff of smoke (literally, well several million puffs of smoke from YOUR plane/car/boat/cow) before we reach the point where we’re chewing the newspaper, pissing on the dog and finding the Labour Party manifesto interesting.

There’s a drug. Combats Alzheimer’s. Being tested right now in a United State near you. And it can prevent the spread of the brain damage caused by that most horrible of destructive diseases. So that’s good.

What’s not so good is that this drug was trialled for a few years before the company abandoned it in February. And now, just 8 months later, its the ‘next biggest thing’. Ah, so that’s brilliant. Why the turnaround? Because they’ve re-done the tests/analysis and found its 40% successful!!!! (Totally fucking meaningless, is that a 40% reduction on everybody? Or it works on 40% of the people??) So what we really need to know, whilst we can still remember the answer, is: ‘so what has changed: the drug or the statistical analysts?’ Because as all cynics know, statistics can say anything you want them to say or pay for them to say.

Happy Friday. Gotta get ready for the World Cup semi-finals for the rugby, with Ing-er-lund playing tomorrow!!!!

A xxxx