My Dad’s a Goldfish – Sorry for the gap

My last post included an apology for being so late in posting and here I am apologising again. What’s my excuse this time? For a long time I’ve been saying I’m going to turn this blog into a proper memoir and publish it. I thought that, as I have already written up so much of the Goldfish’s story it would be a fairly simple job to edit it and pull it into shape. Silly me!

I soon discovered the blog posts as they have been put up here don’t fit together into a book. Each post has its own narrative arc and stitching them together would make a very bitty sort of book – I knew what I mean. Basically, the whole thing needs to be restructured and after a several false starts I finally managed to find my way into it. While working on the start of the book, I’ve found it difficult to plan blog posts but hope now to get back on track.

I am not going to make any rash statements about when the book will be ready for publication because I know even once I succeed in structuring it properly it will need a lot more editing. I’d like to think it could be ready before the end of the year, though – as long as I don’t lose heart.

I realised, too, that in keeping blog posts to a reasonable length I’ve cut out quite a lot of material, which I think should be included in the book. While going through old diaries I was surprised to realise how lonely I was at times after I’d moved in with the Goldfish; upset at how some friends seemed to disappear and touched when others made an effort to visit.

I looked further back to pre-dementia diagnosis days. Ten years ago the Goldfish (who wasn’t a goldfish then) was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pain, which was diagnosed as gallstones. Unfortunately, nothing went to plan and his condition became worse, partly because they starved him for over a week while they dithered about whether to operate.  I’ll tell you about that episode in the next post. Soon!