I have an appointment with the Parkinson’s nurse this morning, so I head over to the cottage hospital in North Walsham after walking the dog and listening to PopMaster. I don’t really have anything that I need to see the nurse about, but I feel it’s useful to maintain a link. We chat about my recent referrals for speech therapy and physiotherapy, and I remark on the unavailability of services and equipment for people with Parkinson’s. The nurse recommends that I contact the local office of Parkinson’s UK to ask about a grant, telling me that they are always saying that they have plenty of money available, and asking her for guidance on what they should spend it on. Well, I have a few ideas that would lighten their bank account by more than a few thousand pounds, so I agree to contact them this afternoon and see what they have to say. I phone the local representative for Parkinson’s UK this afternoon, and she seemed very guarded in her response to my questions, and a whole lot less certain about the availability of grants for the provision of equipment and services than the Parkinson’s nurse, but she did say that she’d “look into it” if I sent her some information by email, so that’s exactly what I’ll do. It’ll be interesting to see what the UK’s largest Parkinson’s charity can actually offer to people with Parkinson’s – I’m prepared to be disappointed because (in my view) it is run more as a lucrative business with a board of very well paid directors than as a charity whose sole purpose should be improving the lives of the people after whom it is named. I’m more than happy to be proved wrong, though.