After tweeting about this last night, I felt a little more detail was in order.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Terry Pratchett. Since right back when the first Discworld novel was released, I’ve been there. Inevitably I also became interested in the author.

last night I happened to be flicking through the channels and saw Terry Pratchett’s name come up on BBC. The show was Part 1 of a 2 part series about him dealing with early onset of Alzheimer’s.

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

It wasn’t news to me. Following the career of a favourite author, one tends to know these things. At first I was happy to see him talking and discussing the whole thing. After a while I began to find it quite distressing.

At one point Terry was reading an excerpt of his then new book and his reading slowly began to deteriorate. He was saying that there were shadows across the text but also voiced over that of course this was the “Alzheimer’s kicking in.”

Before I knew it, I was shuddering with tears. I felt obviously saddened to see such an inventive and imaginative mind, having trouble reading the very words that have brought him to all of our lives.

I also felt guilty. I know that Terry himself would hate the thought of sympathy from some random person who he has never met. But it wasn’t really sympathy. It was more the irony and tragedy of the whole thing. And of course his anger with it. I completely understand that.

But what a wonderful and generous thing it was for him to allow the public to witness it.

After the show had finished, I sat dazed for a short while and then QI came on.

QI Team

QI Team

I couldn’t help but wonder if it was wrong for me to now find myself laughing at the light hearted humour of QI.

Most of us are now familiar with the sharing of life that is given through Twitter and his own web site by the wonderful Mr Stephen Fry. I wondered what Mr Fry would make of the feeling of ambivalence I had.

I suppose this is one of the negative sides to sharing so much information. It is sometimes difficult to filter it into categories of what should be part of your “real” life and what should be forgotten once the page (or TweetDeck) is closed or the TV switched off.

I probably sound like a stalker here. LOL. But normally I am not affected in this way at all. For various reasons that I will not go into now, I find myself emotionally strong. Shedding tears in front of the TV is not something I do often, if at all.

Waking up today I felt that things were normal again. Apart from the weather which is stopping the flying training that I love so much. Probably just as well due to low finances also at the moment.

Still the snow is nice to look at and it won’t be here for ever.

So it’s time to fire up the Flight Sim and take to the virtual skies!

:-)