The lady is for turning

Carol Thatcher has written a book called A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl of Life. Normally this wouldn’t be interesting at all, except she has revealed intimate details of her mother’s encroaching dementia.

This has caused a storm in the British press with people asking whether she has gone too far, whether this is an invasion of privacy and whether we really needed to know. I suspect Carol needed to tell; otherwise who would have bothered to read her ‘memoirs’?

There is a touching episode, much quoted in the papers, about how Carol discovered her mother’s approaching Alzheimer’s (when she was 75) and how painful it was for her to repeat the tale of Dennis’ death.

"Losing Dad, however, was truly awful for Mum, not least because her dementia meant she kept forgetting he was dead. I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again.

Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she'd look at me sadly and say 'Oh,' as I struggled to compose myself. 'Were we all there?' she'd ask softly.”

I’ve seen this happen. It’s horrible. And it’s horrible for the person who has to break the news – and their loved one’s heart – all over again.

So I guess I am robbed of my hatred for a woman I never met. When I heard about the disease, my initial reaction was, “If I’d broken the spirit of the people of my country, sold all the national resources to private corporations, stomped on the rights of the workers and their families, destroyed the power of unions, and eradicated the notion of society, I’d rather forget it too.”

Him outdoors once said he would have a party on the day she died. I never held with that, as my dislike was saved for what she did politically, not who she was personally. Is the political personal? Perhaps – just ask Skunk Anansie. Thatcher more than most with her blind devotion to Milton Friedman economics, made it so.

Although I partied hard the day she left 10 Downing Street in a taxi and in tears, I can’t be pleased at this news. Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease that robs people of their dignity and the only response can be sympathy. She wins again.