World Alzheimers Day
Most people know someone who has dementia, or families living with dementia, and many have experienced it at close hand in a friend or loved one. It is a cruel illness that robs someone’s personality – sometimes changing it as well as taking away treasured traits. Many of us have a niggling fear in the backs of our minds that maybe we too could succumb to it. Today is a day to remember those who have it, celebrating what they still have, and what they once had; to remember families and friends coping with all the challenges (often 24/7), their ‘long letting go’, the pain of still loving and caring for someone who hasn’t the personality that once they had; to remember those who provide support and respite for people with dementia and their families; to remember those working to find a treatment or cure
Lord, dementia is such a cruel illness. Sometimes those with it are content ‘in their own wee world’, sometimes they are deeply distressed. It wears down family and friends coping 24/7. We give thanks for their commitment and the support that social care staff and charities give. We pray for all who are living with it/ trying to cope with it, for those trying to find treatments and cures, and that governments will focus on providing the necessary framework and finance for effective support and care
Royal Burgh founded 1222:
In 1098 King Edgar of Scotland conceded that the Norwegian king had sovereignty over the Western Isles, Kintyre and the Clyde islands. The powerful Lords of the Isles, with clan support, were always ready to raid or attack the West Coast mainland, and make alliances with the Scottish kings’ enemies (internal enemies or the English kings).The Scottish kings tried hard to counter the threat, and King Alexander II (1214-49) planned to take the fight to the Western Isles. With that in mind he fortified the Castle at Dumbarton, and founded the Royal Burgh in 1222, intending it to be his naval base, and a bulwark against attack
