Alastair Stewart: These were my first signs of dementia

Like their father, they sell new books, second-hand books, and upmarket antiquarian volumes. They are also skilled picture framers and sell a wide range of pictures, prints, and maps. They have a splendid and imaginatively stocked children’s section.

I love and collect antique maps and have purchased several from Oxley’s. Stephen, like his father before him, is very knowledgeable.

The great portrait photographer Jane Bown lived in Alresford, on Broad Street, just across from Oxley’s. They were great friends. I often saw Jane on the Alton to London train with her cameras in a carrier bag.

Her portraits adorned the back page of The Observer for many years, but in her early years, she was also an acclaimed society photographer.

She once invited me in to see her private stock, featuring Noël Coward, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, and countless other stars of that era. When she died, her estate asked that Oxley’s sell them off.

I purchased half a dozen, including a signed print of her black-and-white portrait of Mick Jagger, arguably the best of him available.

She never used flash, only natural light, but she was a true mistress of her art. Only the very best can do without flash bulbs and lamps.

The second hurrah goes to the weekly Hampshire Chronicle, a classic of the genre. My dear friend Khalid Aziz writes a column in it.

This week, he wrote in support of eye tests and second driving tests for the elderly and mentally frail. He also recommended tests for the early signs of dementia.

I told him over lunch that I agreed with all of it. Declining spatial awareness, difficulty parking, and reduced speed awareness in the car were, for me, early indicators.

Others could benefit from Khalid’s description and avoid accidents and insurance claims.

I hope the Transport Secretary, the accomplished Heidi Alexander, who I have always liked and admired, and who is one of the more impressive people in Cabinet, takes note.

Also at lunch, as usual, was another mutual friend, Bob Sperring, an entrepreneur and early adopter of new technologies.

He is currently fascinated by artificial intelligence and had fed the Aziz article through his AI app, which shortened it, but, as Khalid observed, clipped some of the creativity.

Still, we can all celebrate the triumph of the AI-equipped pharmacologists, who have come up with a couple of new possible antibiotics capable of fighting superbugs.

We also discussed world events and politics, and mourned the low calibre of the current generation of leaders around the globe.

There was little or no optimism for the Alaska talks on Ukraine, but there wasn’t any either for the 1986 Reagan–Gorbachev Iceland talks on disarmament, which I covered.

In the end, those talks proved to be a stepping-stone to real and verifiable reductions on both sides in nuclear weapons, a turning point in ending the Cold War.

Reagan had said of Soviet/Russian offers under Gorbachev: “Trust but verify.”

I hope Trump remembers that with any offers Putin puts on the table in Alaska, at least the verify bit.

On migration, the Anglo-French "one in, one out" pact came into force, to little or no effect.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp took to the high seas to observe, but GB News had as much difficulty getting the signal back to the UK as Britain did getting boat people back to France.

Rachel Reeves’ claims of economic stability became more laughable as unemployment rose, along with labour shortages and those on Universal Credit.

Economic growth ticked up slightly from April to June, but at a slower rate. Economists warned that higher taxes expected in the Budget next month could prove fatal.