Most people get it. I’ve written before about the kind consideration My Loved One – Ms Alzheimer’s glowering menacingly over his shoulder –  routinely gets from total strangers but it’s so very striking that I make no apology for returning to the subject.

Seats are readily vacated on buses and trains and there’s a lot of courteous standing back as soon as they spot that MLO is shaky on his pins – which, just to make sure, I routinely signal to all and sundry by saying clearly “Mind this step” or “Hold on to me” which is as much for those around us as for MLO himself.

On one occasion the tube train was very crowded. I managed to lever MLO into a priority seat but stood, “strap hanging” (as we used to call it) near the door myself. Inevitably lots more people got on and stood between him and me so I started to worry about how I was going to get him off when we reached our station. In the event I managed to weave an arm through the bodies. MLO got the message and reached towards me. Then the crowd miraculously moved, like a mini parting of the Red Sea, so that I could haul him out. All done in typically British silence of course  – apart from my saying thank you –  but so thoughtful and decent. I suppose it’s the same mentality as pulling over for an ambulance.

On our recent trip to the US we explored Arlington Cemetery (both interesting and powerfully poignant) via a hop-on hop-off bus tour of the site. MLO is no longer proficient at hopping and had to take the three steps on and off the bus very carefully – usually with me standing at the bottom to proffer a steadying hand. When we reached the place where they do the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier (the only bit of the whole holiday MLO now remembers with clarity, by the way) there was a big brawny twenty-something in front of us. He was covered in tattoos and wearing a base ball cap which in another life might have made me leap to unreasonable, stereotypical conclusions. In fact, he bounded down the steps before turning to help MLO with exquisite courtesy. I was almost as moved by that as by the changing of the guard which, for the record, I thought was a rather repetitive 3* piece of theatre. Good to see “vets” in wheelchairs brought from all over the US by charities to witness it, though.

I am also impressed by the cheerful kindness of the people who provide “special assistance” at airports. The pleasant, chatty, caring young woman who was awaiting us with a wheelchair at the aircraft door in Washington took us all the way through immigration, baggage reclaim, customs, on an airport “train” and right out to a taxi outside. By then – maybe 45 minutes in her company – I’d heard her entire life story (grandmother in California with Alzheimer’s) and felt really welcome in her country. Yes, I know that’s her job but she clearly takes real pride in it and she earned every cent of the $5 I tipped her. The service is kind enough at Heathrow too but less efficient and with a lot more hanging about because, I gather, it’s “outsourced”.

Needing the loo frequently and urgently is an ongoing problem. In one coffee shop there were two unisex lavatories but one was out of order. I got the code number for the door from the counter and told MLO about six times what it was but he still came back to me inarticulate with panic. So I went round to said door and punched the number in myself. Of course it was occupied and there was, anyway, a woman waiting. “Well it’s a queue” I said. “You’ll have to stand behind this lady and wait.” She spotted the problem instantly: “No no, you go first” she said warmly. “What a star. The vast majority of people are fabulous. I rest my case.

Then there are other people’s perceptions of me and how I deal with it. Back in London we went to Next the other day where Costa is on the first floor and we decided to go up for coffee or , in my case, tea. Well I expect there’s a lift but I really do believe I have to keep MLO moving for as long as possible. When we’d finished our drinks we set off slowly down the steps with me, as usual, walking two steps in front holding his free hand firmly. We were watched by the fascinated security guard at the foot of the staircase by the main door. “I wish I had a wife as kind as you” he said, going on to inform us that his wife had left him and taken most of his money. Life with Ms Alzheimer’s certainly triggers some strange conversations.

When I was at school we didn’t have assembly. The whole-school morning gathering was unequivocally called “Prayers”. And once we were there, our deeply Christian headmistress regularly addressed her Almighty in these simple supplicatory words: “Help us to be kind”. Well I have no truck with her God but by golly she was right with that thought. Kindness is probably the most important factor in human behaviour. If we are kind to each other we can cope with almost anything.

We seem to be morphing into a box-ticking case study. Whenever an Alzheimer’s patient is “assessed” (like being back in the classroom) he or she and/or the carer is always asked about dressing, undressing and eating. Until recently the answer to such questions has always been “Fine. No problems.”

But things are changing. “Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?” I often find myself thinking although Lady Macbeth’s context was different. I don’t want My Loved One to commit regicide but it would be good if he could find and put on his socks.

For the first time ever, I packed his case as well as mine for our recent trip to the US. I knew there was no chance whatever of his working out what he needed, finding it and putting it in a suitcase. So I put socks, pants, shirts, trousers, night things and his washbag into his trusty black suitcase along with the vests, to which my now cold-blooded man has become inseparably attached irrespective of the temperature. I told him that it’s meant to be warm and sunny in late September Washington DC (and it was) but he wasn’t having it. He has travelled the world, incidentally, with that case so it’s a very familiar old friend. Mine is brown and we keep his things and mine separate-ish although sometimes it gets a bit fluid on the return journey when it’s just a question of getting everything in somewhere.

On the first morning in Washington, I emerged from the bathroom to find him naked, in a flap and rummaging in my case. “I think I’ve come away without any pants and socks” he said anxiously. “Nonsense, I packed them myself” I said getting them out of his case and passing them to him.” An incident like that makes me go chilly with horror – yet one more thing he can’t grasp. I can almost see his brain fogging up. For the rest of the time we were away I mostly had to supervise his choice of clothes and dressing.

And I have, come to think of it, been helping, with pullovers and coats for some time. Child-like he can’t seem to get his arms lined up with the sleeves.  Sometimes, moreover, I find myself offering advice about appropriateness too. “There’s a reception before this show. You might be more comfortable in a jacket” or “That pullover looks really tatty. Why don’t you wear this nicer, newer one instead?”

Back home, ever since we moved in September 2016, all his clothes have lived in the big fitted wardrobe we had put into the next door bedroom which he uses as a quasi dressing room. These days I often find him, puzzled, opening the doors of the wardrobes in the smaller bedroom we sleep in, where my clothes live, because, thanks to Ms Alzheimer’s, he can’t remember where his own are.

Then there’s eating. By his own admission – so it clearly worries him – he now struggles to use cutlery to get food to his mouth. Well, we comfortably abandoned rigid traditional British table manners in favour of common sense and convenience decades ago – all that silly business about eating everything with a knife and fork and never turning the latter that we grew up with, for example.  If we’re eating, say, curry, casserole or risotto we lay a spoon and fork. If it’s roast potatoes and some cut-able vegetarian nut thing or if we’re having something like omelettes we use knives and forks as our parents would have done. Sometimes (for instance for a pasta dish with a side salad) we lay both. There’s nothing remotely “tricky” or formal about eating in our house so it’s a bit tragic to see MLO struggling. The food seems to fall off the spoon or fork and he gets bitterly frustrated. I think it must be a co-ordination problem which prevents him loading spoon of fork securely and then keeping it horizontal. I’ve offered to cut his food up and suggested that he stick to a spoon perhaps with a shallow dish rather than a flat plate but, he’s understandably not keen on being served up food as if he were a toddler. One more nail in the coffin of normality.

Did you ever read Martin Amis’s 1991 novel Time’s Arrow? It’s mainly a holocaust story but the central conceit is that the main character is whizzing through his life in reverse so that eventually he gets reabsorbed into the womb. Well of course, this is real life and that’s not going to happen to MLO but I can certainly see him moving inexorably back towards what Shakespeare called “second childishness”. Our youngest granddaughter, approaching her fourth birthday, is now probably better – and improving all the time – at dressing and eating. Any day now they’ll  shoot pass each other like vehicles heading in opposite directions on a long road.