"At Some Point I'm Going to Leave My Own Club" - Living With Dementia and Building Something Anyway | Ian Carter

Ian Carter was 57 when he noticed something was wrong. The anxiety about seeing his golf mates. The mistakes at work he'd never made before. The arguments he couldn't stop starting. By 2024 it was confirmed: frontal temporal dementia. A condition, as Ian puts it, that doesn't kill you. It changes you.He fell into the void between diagnosis and deterioration — a gap the NHS has almost nothing to fill. He didn't want triangle sandwiches and a tambourine. So he started his own group.No Tier Snooker began with three members and one loved one in January 2025. It now has a sold-out event at Congleton Town Hall with Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor recreating the most watched frame of snooker in television history — 220 tickets gone in eight days — raising money for dementia charities.This is a conversation about digging yourself out of the trench and finding something to build. And what it means to build something you know, one day, you'll have to leave.Listen as we discuss...(1:00) "I was a normal 57 year old. I thought I was just getting old."(2:00) The early signs — anxiety, behavioural changes, work mistakes(4:50) The diagnosis: frontal temporal dementia(6:45) Why he left a successful business to become a lorry driver(9:20) How FTD flips familiarity — strangers feel safer than old friends(12:55) The prognosis — FTD doesn't kill you. It changes you.(18:20) His wife — and how to care for someone who may not care back(21:00) The decision not to tell the kids yet(25:45) In the trench — and what pulled him out(27:30) Starting No Tier Snooker(31:05) "I won't have the word carer in the club. They're loved ones."(33:20) Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor, and the 1985 final(44:20) Steve and Dennis — one more time, for Ian's club(46:20) 220 tickets. Sold out in eight days.(52:50) The NHS and social prescribing(54:00) "Understanding is the most powerful tool."(58:05) "At some point I'm going to leave my own club."KEY TAKEAWAYSThe void between diagnosis and deterioration is the gap nobody fills — The NHS has provision for when dementia progresses. It has almost nothing for the period in between. That's where No Tier Snooker lives, and where the most important support work happens.FTD doesn't kill you — it changes you — Understanding the specific condition is what makes a difference. Not generic dementia awareness. The anxiety, the familiarity problem, the impulsive decisions — these aren't personality flaws. They're the condition.Understanding is the most powerful medicine — Not love, not sympathy. If the people around you understand the condition, they become your strongest support. If they don't, even love can't bridge the gap.Build something you'll have to leave anyway — Ian knows the condition will progress. He's building No Tier Snooker knowing it will keep going without him. That's not sad to him. That's the whole point.THE GUEST Ian Carter - Founder, No Tier Snooker