Since being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Wendy Mitchell has written three books, taken up photography and walked a 1,000ft highwire. Living your best life, she reveals, also means confronting death
The late May sun is streaming through Wendy Mitchell’s conservatory windows as she sits in her armchair and gazes out on to her garden in bloom. Spring is finally yielding to summer and in this small corner of east Yorkshire the fading forget-me-nots and primroses are giving way to the vivid blush of ruby geraniums.
“I love bright colours,” says the former NHS administrator with the widest of smiles, her bright eyes flitting from left to right, pausing every so often to name what she sees: the slender-stemmed purple alliums “standing to attention” in front of the hedge; the multicoloured Sweet Williams scattered around in baskets and pots. “I adore my geraniums because they’re so vibrant,” she tells me, “and they don’t need a lot of water, so I don’t need to remember to water them!”
