That's too bad. I very much hope that for him it'll be the kind of Altzheimers that can be happy. He deserves it.

I've just reached down from my shelf by the computer his songbook Green Print for Song. So many beautiful and subtly simple songs. But it's not just a songbook - the notes which accompany the songs are, in their way, as good as the songs, and they put them in a new light sometimes. Just a small example, from his note to The Lord of the Dance:

"Sometimes for a change I sing the whole song in the present tense - I dance in the morning when the world is begun... It's worth a try."

Often when people have Altheimers, their whole sense of time is confused. I hope that maybe with Sydney that confusion will mean that he can still see the world around him as a wonderful place. That was always the way he used to see it, when I knew him many years ago.