Yours looks like a reasonably good solution, Peter.

In my own parents’ case, both of whom have severe dementia, we used to lock the front door with the mortise lock at all times and put the key in a handy but not obvious place.

It worked, whilst being only mildly inconvenient, and was a much better system than them leaving the front door wide open all night [not merely unlocked] or going out wandering together and being brought home [yet again] in a stranger’s car after getting into difficulties on their walk.

Time has now resolved this problem for us because both of them are now in hospital beds [in their own home], and unable to walk or stand or speak or understand us or care for themselves in any way.

Hi, my grandmother developed Alzheimer's more or less after my grandfather died. She came to live with us, but her condition got worse quite rapidly, and when we moved house, she started to spend about six weeks in care and then came back to spend six weeks with us. One day she had got out of the house, and I spotted her walking past our front room window on the street, and immediately realised she was going for a walk to who knows where. So my quick thinking was to go and grab my pushbike and catch up with her, as she could still walk fairly fast, even with her winter coat on. I was only about 14 at the time, and when I caught up with her, I tried to convince her to come back home. It was a hot sunny day in the school holidays, and we ended in town, which was about a mile and a half from our house, after about another half mile trek around the town centre, I managed to convince her it was time to go home. When we got back, the rest of my family had been quite worried, but guessed that I was with her.

One of the saddest things though, was that she could get quite violent if you pushed her too much to do anything she didn't what to do, but she was the nicest and kindest person you could ever meet with the patience of a saint, before she became ill. She did eventually stay in care permanently, where she died peacefully about nine months later. It is certainly a horrible disease and a lot of care and understanding needs to be had for people who get it, and it can be hard work day after day.

Regards Nick.

It really is an awful disease. A long-time friend ended his days in a residential home with it, past the point of losing his speech – though he still seemed able to say "No!" quite vehemently at times. His wife told me when he was still at home, nocturnal wandering around the house was a common trait for him; but eventually there comes a point when it becomes impossible to even guess what the sufferer might be thinking.

As well, obviously, as his wife, and sometimes me until knee operations then the pandemic stopped me, his brother and sister-in-law visited him and took for walks in nearby gardens, which he seemed to enjoy.

Eventually, despite all precautions, Covid managed to sneak into the home and took him; already weakened by the Alzheimer's and a heart problem. His wife said two nurses were with him, to arrange a doctor's appointment. They turned away briefly, turned back to see him apparently asleep as he often was…..

I realised he'd been my longest-standing friend, as we met as Junior Members of our Model Engineering Society, in our teens. We were in our late-60 when he passed away.

The first sign something was amiss, his wife had told me, was him coming in from his workshop puzzled because he was finding increasingly hard to carry out the normal measuring and machining calculations he used to find straightforward.

In some ways, maybe the Covid was a blessing (two fellow-residents, women some years older than him, caught but recovered from it) but what hurt me more was the sequel. His widow and I started selling some of his tools and his part-built pair of 4" – scale Fowler ploughing-engines, but then she started to make any further selling difficult, made me look foolish to enquirers a few times, then cut me off without any explanation, and that was that.

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There are various forms of dementia. In some ways reading the above was comforting in revealing that the loss of speech is one effect, so my pal had not been alone in that. Another form blocks recognising ordinary objects: ask the person to bring the sugar, for example, and he or she might present you with the kettle or something else quite unlike a sugar-bowl.

We often read or hear how this or that slowly-progressive disease is becoming more common. Well, the stark reason even if taken as proportion of population rather than just numbers, that is because we are all living longer and largely avoiding or being cured of what might have carried us away early back in our grandparents' day.

Dementia, Parkinsons, Multiple Sclerosis…. (the last has recently taken another friend, the widow of another fellow model-engineering club member who not long previously had succumbed to cancer). Terrible, terrifying illnesses with no cure, only some slowing of their progression in their destroying the person before finally destroying the life.