Julie Goodyear photo furore proves that only happiness matters - Christa Ackroyd

Well you would be wrong. Even before the carpets are ripped up and the old bathroom suite removed, before a single lick of paint is added to the bizarre pink and purple on the walls I had to have my loved ones around me.

Our children on holiday, our grandchildren, good friends and family in assorted mismatched frames taken at a time when you went to the chemist to have them printed.

Of all the photographs there is one which has always taken pride of place these last few years. And it does here now. It was taken almost ten years ago at my daughter’s wedding.

Three generations, smiling, no, laughing, a moment shared, a moment to be remembered and captured forever. My daughter looked beautiful on her wedding day but then all mothers say that.

I of course had a big hat. And in the middle was my mum. New Marks and Spencer’s mustard wool coat. New navy hat. And a pink scarf. The significance of which I will explain in a moment.

So why were we laughing so uncontrollably rather than the usual sedate wedding shot? It was a lovely day. My mum had sat beside me for the whole service beaming away. She had sang every hymn with gusto never needing once to glance at the words printed at the order of service.

A little tear trickled down her face as my daughter and her husband exchanged their vows in a church she knew well in a North Yorkshire village near to where she was born.

The church was filled with candlelight and love and I held mum’s hand tightly as we came out into the winter sun. It was when our lovely photographer friend Mark asked me to bring my mum for a photograph with the bride, her granddaughter, that it all went a little awry and momentary sadness came to the fore.

“Oh hello Briony,” she said. “I have been looking for you and couldn’t find you.” My daughter didn’t quite know what to say. “Mum,” I replied. ”You have just watched her get married.”

It could have been an awful moment, a moment of realisation on her part, as well as ours, that she was lost. But then she started laughing. We did too. We laughed and we laughed until we couldn’t stop. And it was beautiful.

As is the photograph which captures our happiness and our closeness. Mum not only had dementia but had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s some five years previously.

She had been brought to the wedding by one of the carers we surrounded her with until the last year of her life when she could no longer live at home. “Sorry about the pink scarf,” the carer whispered as she brought mum into church. “I know it doesn’t go, but she insisted.”

That was the last time my mum had an outing. And the last time I heard her infectious chuckle turn into uncontrollable laughter.

But not the last time we expressed our love for her. But oh how precious that photograph is. I am looking at it now as I write with tears in my eyes.

Yet if you look closely it is not just the pink scarf that gives her condition away. Beneath her finery she was frail.

And her eyes, always bright and sparkly even when she lost my father, had a dullness behind them, a confusion I was to witness many times in the ten years she suffered. And she did suffer. In the months and years after her diagnosis she was often frightened.

But on that day in that moment at a wedding she wouldn’t have missed for the world she smiled and she sang and she laughed out loud, caught up in the atmosphere and the centre of attention even if she didn’t understand what was going on.

So why am I telling you this now? Because last week the husband of Coronation Street stalwart Julie Goodyear was forced to take down a picture after a grand day out with his wife to celebrate her 83rd birthday.

Yes Julie bore absolutely no resemblance to the Bet Lynch character she had played for so many years. No make up, missing teeth, barely recognisable. But beaming from ear to ear.

She was happy, her hair was washed and brushed and more importantly she was loved by the man who has stood by her even when it became hard to cope. And it does become incredibly hard. But was he being disrespectful? Was he being cruel? No he was celebrating a good day.

I tell you what is disrespectful. I tell you what is viciously cruel. The disease that has robbed her and robbed him of who she once was. But at least she is still smiling.

One million people live with Alzheimer’s in the UK, a figure predicted to rise to 1.4 million by 2040 as we live longer even with the dreadful disease that one in 13 of us is likely to succumb to. Support in terms of care is pitifully poor. Most people struggle along just doing their best.

On TV at the moment is an advert from the Alzheimer’s Society which has helped Julie and her husband come to terms with what is happening now and what they can expect in the future. The advert is of a young man describing how his mother died three times.

Once on diagnosis when she will have been well enough to comprehend. The second time when she couldn’t remember his name (a blessing that never ever happened to me) and thirdly when she died in reality.

Until then every moment of happiness is precious. Even if the body and mind are changed forever.

Part of the work of the Alzheimer’s Society is not only finding a cure, which we are assured is very near, but in urging patients and careers who are often loved ones to live their best life whatever that best life may be. And that doesn’t mean shutting them away ashamed of who they have become.

Julie Goodyear obviously loved her day out and is almost certainly unaware of her change in appearance.

For me I have a picture of my mum, beaming beside my daughter even though despite the long white dress her granddaughter she had absolutely no idea why she was there. But that didn’t matter.

It mattered that she was laughing, holding our hands and dressed in the new hat and coat I had bought for her. With a pink scarf, that didn’t match.

I have so many prettier pictures of my mum. In her youth. With dad on her wedding day. With me and my brother on the beach. On high days and holidays.

But there is none so precious as the last time she left her house and later the home who cared for her on a big trip out back to her roots, among friends and family most of whom she couldn’t remember.

But she felt the love and witnessed the joy. And if that didn’t warrant a pink scarf with a mustard coat and a blue hat I don’t know what does.