Dad was complaining, as he trundled his trolley round Sainsbury's, that they'd shifted products round in the aisles. Frankly I doubt this; more likely is that his mental "Hitch-hiker's Guide" was giving him its own take on reality, which failed to correspond to what was actually out there; he was remembering wrong.
I have acquired a certain reputation in the family, over the years, for planning walks that go pear-shaped. Whenever this happens I am accused of mis-reading the map. Not true; my map-reading skills are second to none. But the facts on the ground often fail to correspond to the map, or - in our family version of the Adams gag - reality boobs again. The classic example of this was the day my wife booted me out of the house with our children for the morning and I took them on a walk in mid-Wharfedale. I planned a little circular trot using the 1:25,000 map, detailed enough to show the stone walls, never mind major features like bridges.
I mention bridges because as we came to the end of our walk, all we had to do to get back to the lane where I'd parked the car was cross the Wharfe by the bridge clearly marked on the map, the green pecked line of the public footpath superimposed over the blue of the river. And there, in reality, rose over the Wharfe the complete absence of any bridge whatever. It must have collapsed many years ago, only traces of its pillars remained but no-one had thought to inform the Ordance Survey of this.
There were only two alternatives: to retrace our steps, which would have meant getting home at least an hour late with two knackered, hungry and very fractious children; or wade across the river. This being in the days before mobile phones, I had no way of letting my wife know where we were and she'd be frantic. There had been little rain of late and the Wharfe looked as docile as it ever does, so it seemed like a no-brainer. It was still the Wharfe, though, a notorious stretch of water at any time. And it did occur to me as I carried the second, heavier child across the main current, my feet negotiating slimy rocks on the river bed, that with the water halfway up my thighs I was only one false step away from disaster. I made it all right as it happened, but still got a telling off from the missus when she realised how big a risk I'd taken.
Reality boobed big time that day. But yesterday, back in Grottsville, it boobed in a different sense that provided a kind of metaphor for early dementia.
I know the town, I was brought up there. But that was forty years ago, since when the developers have done their worst. There is now an Inner Ring Road, the centre is pedestrianised, once major roads have been downgraded or blocked off, new landmarks have risen like concrete fungi, and whole chunks of the place just aren't there. The one-way system would fox the Enigma code-breakers. All I had to do was drive to a familiar road just north of the market place. I'd allowed myself 20 minutes; it took me an hour and what was worse, I asked for directions twice. The first person sent me to a completely the wrong place; the second one knew how to get there on foot but if you tried in a car you quickly found yourself confronted by a row of bollards.
Think dementia. You know your way around but reality has gone and re-arranged itself without consulting you. You can get from A to B, but you always used to go via C - G, and C isn't there any more, D isn't the pork butchers, it's a Tesco Express, E isn't on the bus route, F is a dual carriageway where there used to be a church, and G is a dead end. You ask someone how to get to B but they don't know where you mean or they're not native to the region or you can't fathom their accent. You get to B in the end but it's more luck than judgement and you've no confidence you'd be able to do it again. Having dementia is like finding your way round the town in which you grew up where only certain landmarks are where they always were, others are missing, new buildings have sprung up to accommodate new-fangled industries, and none of the roads go where you'd expect.
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