In My Shoes

Parkinson’s UK, the largest UK charity devoted to curing and caring for people affected by Parkinson’s, has a theme for this year’s Parkinson’s Awareness Week: “In My Shoes”. It’s about explaining what it’s like to have Parkinson’s, and it’s about shoes. Because shoes are easier to illustrate.

Skittle Statistics

I was putting a short piece together to accompany the Parkinson’s UK collecting tin while it spends Parkinson’s Awareness Week at my workplace, and I thought I’d illustrate the statistics. The graphic didn’t seem very conducive to parting the unaware from their cash, so I left it out.

But I thought that it was worth posting it here.

The statistics are:

One person in every 500 has Parkinson’s. (That’s the coloured skitttle.)
Most are diagnosed over the age of 50, but one in 20 is under the age of 40. (That’s the pink bit.)

Basically, one person in every 2,500 gets diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson’s before they hit 40. (It’s still Young Onset below the age of 50, I believe, but I haven’t found what the statistics are for the extra ten years.)

To do, or not to do, that is the dichotomy

I reached the end of Chapter 4 of Pete Langman’s Slender Threads last night. It’s a chapter in which he considers the question of what having Parkinson’s “means” – what the results of having the condition might be. He talks about playing the guitar (he was once a pretty good player, I gather) and about attending a less-than-satisfying gig.

But he concludes with the following, which resonated somewhat with me:

Perhaps this is what PD means to me – it means that I must do rather than merely experience. I find reading nigh-on impossible these days. But I write a lot.

It makes a perverse sort of sense.

- Pete Langman, Slender Threads

Exhibition Report

Look, there’s the collection tin!

Bromley Arts Festival, 24th March 2013: Art and the Collecting Tin

On Sunday, there is an Arts Festival in Bromley. Bromley, for those who are not sure, is in the bit of Kent that coincides with Greater London.

I have no connection with Bromley whatsoever… except that I managed to connect with somene who lives there and somehow, between us, we cooked up the idea of my doing a few paintings of the area (Bromley is both town and borough, and has lots of lovely countryside that I didn’t really paint much of at all; this is a predominantly urban project). This turned into my Bromley Project, subtitled “A Day in Bromley”, because that is how long I was there.

But this coming Sunday, me and my Bromley Project are going back to Bromley. We’re going to sit in a shipping container turned pop up art gallery and be part of the official Bromley Arts Festival. And joining us, sitting quietly in a corner, will be a Parkinson’s UK collecting tin.

I’ve also got some postcards of my Mervyn Peake entry to sell. Every single penny of the sales from those will also go to Parkinson’s UK.