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Following the diagnosis I was with her at home all the time, and took charge of matters, organising the children's routines etc. It was clear that this was a great relief to them and to Val. I remember Guy quite happily watching Manchester United playing football in the Champions League on the television on the evening of Wednesday 21 April 1999 only two days after the catastrophic revelation of his Mother's terminal diagnosis. Children are very resilient. Life quickly got onto a reasonably even keel at home, with the help of family and friends. Val did not seem to think it strange that I was at home all the time only once or twice asking me when I was going to go back to work.

The most difficult problem I recall having to deal with during this period was stopping her from driving her car. This I achieved simply by ensuring that the keys to both her and my car were in my pocket at all times. If she said she wanted to go somewhere, I would say that I would take her, or that we did not need to go at all, and this approach generally worked. On 1 June 1999 I drove her car to a friend's house nearby, who had kindly agreed to sell it for me. Val did enquire where it had gone; I said I had sold it. She asked how she would be able to get about, whereupon I said that I would take her wherever she wanted to go. This appeared to satisfy her, and she quickly stopped talking about her car.

This period was very busy for me in that I had to extricate myself from the firm in which I was a partner and learn how to run the house, cook etc. One of the strangest things in all of this is that Val was able to teach me how to cook, although by then being quite unable to cook a meal herself, because she had no sense of prioritisation or managing the various tasks, and a limited attention span. However, she could still remember, and tell me, how to cook a particular meal, which I was able to do because I could prioritise and organise the various tasks involved.

It seemed a great relief to her not to have to bother with the household chores; she was never resentful or in anyway difficult when I simply took things over. She did carry on doing the ironing for some months, but eventually this stopped because she would do no more than one item per ironing session and would occasionally bang the iron and shout 'come out crease! '. I called a halt at this point.

Within a short time of the diagnosis a new pattern of behaviour emerged. Val would spend her days getting into and out of bed, sometimes putting on her night-dress, sometimes remaining dressed, and sometimes appearing tired, but not always; she also took to playing the piano and riding her bicycle.

Val had been a competent pianist at a younger age, although through her period of motherhood and work as a nurse and health visitor she had had little time to play the piano. Now she obviously had more time, and the inclination. Her favourite piece was the old English melody 'Greensleeves' which she would play repetitively. At its height, I imagine she played Greensleeves thirty times during the course of a day. She would play other pieces, including Charlotte's children's pieces, and particularly liked it if Guy, Charlotte or I would dance round an imaginary totem pole in our sitting room while she was playing 'Indian Tom-toms'. As it obviously gave her enormous pleasure, we tried to indulge her as much as possible, but dancing around an imaginary totem pole in one's sitting room repetitively can become tedious!

Perhaps it was because she was no longer driving her car that Val turned to bicycle riding. something she had not done since her childhood. She took to riding around the village and locality during the summer of 1999 and became a well known figure on the country lanes. To the village people who greeted her she would invariably say 'You're a nice person to say hello to me' or if she could remember their name, as in the case of our vicar Derek Frost, would say 'You're called Derek Frost! '. However, her bicycle riding quickly reduced to the same very short trip, which took no more than two minutes to complete, and which she would do repeatedly. At its peak during the summer of 1999 she may have been doing the same abbreviated bicycle ride as many as fifty times per day. Only occasionally did she deviate from her chosen short route.

Val also liked to be taken out in the car on trips to Devizes (our local town), or Bath. She would have imaginary conversations with the passing cars, looking at the registration plates and saying, for example, 'Hello RTH, how are you today RTH?'. She would manifest displeasure if we were stopped by a red traffic light, usually saying 'turn to green instantaneously traffic light! ' If it did not immediately obey her command, there would be an intake of breath, followed by a growl, and finally she would bark, literally like a dog! This performance was actually quite comical, and without anger in the normal sense. Although it is an immense human tragedy, Pick's disease is not without its humorous moments.

Shopping was quite difficult; I either had to shop one handed while holding Val's hand with the other, or park the car such that if she remained in the car she was visible to me from the shops I needed to visit. Happily most of the people in the shops I visited regularly in Devizes quickly became helpful and sympathetic.

We had regular visits to the Consultant Neurologist, Doctor Dawson, at Bath Royal United Hospital, to monitor Val's condition. It quickly became noticeable that the quality and quantity of her speech was deteriorating, and the eating disorder became more pronounced. As soon as we knew what was wrong with Val, and that eating was likely to become a problem, I allowed her to eat as much chocolate as she wanted, and also indulged her liking for grapes. She was attracted to the fruit bowl in the kitchen, and to grapes in particular. I always ensured that grapes were there. Given her increasing difficulties with eating generally, I thought it as well to encourage her to take anything that took her fancy. I was also aware of one of the more bizarre features of Pick's disease, namely the desire of sufferers, in extreme cases, to reach out for any coloured object to put into their mouth (or even nose). I thought that the grapes would conveniently satisfy this particular craving, which they successfully did.

Only very occasionally did Val put the grapes up her nose. An unfortunate by-product of this eating regime was that on occasion Val would be sick. The frequency of her sickness increased, to the point that in May 2000, after she had been sick all over herself in the car after a surfeit of chocolate following a visit to her Mother, I decided it was time to deny her chocolate, which I did simply by ensuring there was none in the places in the house where she would look. Actually, there was chocolate elsewhere, but by then she lacked the ability or determination to search exhaustively. However. I did carry on allowing her the grapes in unlimited quantities. She showed no sign of displeasure at being denied chocolate. It seemed not to bother her at all.