[My disease] is currently advancing rather rapidly. Like many of these neurological conditions, the speed of decline is not constant and can’t be predicted, so no-one knows what the next 12 months will bring. Not only did our financial plans envisage me working at least to normal retirement age (in my case, 66), but we are engaged in major conversion work on the house to enable us to live on the ground floor.

This experience has narrowed rather than broadened horizons. I had supposed that, if I received a terminal diagnosis, I would quit my job, and out would come the bucket list. In fact, most of the external attractions seem trivial. The Taj Mahal has other people to admire it. The Met Opera will carry on without me.

What becomes achingly apparent is that time with my loved ones is all that really matters. It is ironic that I should be struck down by a disease which makes me so dependent. Pride has always been my besetting sin. I have spent a lifetime working 12 and 14 hour days, and enjoying it; whenever some small slot opened in my schedule, I would fill it. It used to be a point of honour for me to pull my weight and do half of the chores: almost all the cooking, almost all the shopping, all the bills, repairs etc. Now my saintly wife does 90% of it, and I look on in impotent rage as she gets more tired and more stressed.

Life is not devoid of amusement. A year and a half ago, long before my diagnosis, Rita drew a sketch of me - Daddy has been reduced to a giant, squishy brain, a pair of googly eyes, and a body truncated down to a pair of Y-fronts. Prescient, eh?