When my father was in his terminal year, I discussed death with him. I recall very clearly his relief that the cancer that was taking him was at least allowing him "all his marbles". Dementia in its varied forms is not like cancer. Dad saw the cancer in his pancreas as an invader. But Alzheimer's is me, unwinding, losing trust in myself, a butt of my own jokes and on bad days capable of playing hunt the slipper by myself and losing. You can't battle it, you can't be a plucky "survivor". It steals you from yourself. And I'm 60; that's supposed to be the new 40.

Seeing my kids getting older scares me.

I was looking at ageing in action, in black-and-white MRI pixels, death and dissolution foretold, and already partly achieved. My 70-year-old brain was shrunken and withered, a worn and sad version of what it once must have been. There were also ominous white spots in the white matter, signs of ischaemic damage, small-vessel disease, known in the trade as white matter hyperintensities – there are various names for them. They looked like some evil pox. Not to put too fine a point on it, my brain is starting to rot. I am starting to rot. It is the writing on the wall, a deadline.

The inability to do things for myself.

Ulysses by James Joyce, but I might make a start next week – or the week after that …

My penchant for having just one too many.

Hopeful, egalitarian, overweight.

We’re not here for long so don’t be wreaking havoc along the way.

As a young actor, again at the Citizens theatre, I was making an exit and a theatregoer leaned over the balcony and said, “You’re terrible!”

Overwhelming, discombobulating, irrational and unreasonable.