Life, the Universe and Everything

I had a great idea for a blog article on the way to work. I had even begun to form the structure and content of the article and managed to come up with a very witty title for maximum impact. Three hours later, and all semblance of this idea has escaped from my mind; even the witty title is no more.

My short term memory is notoriously poor. I am forever calling friends on the telephone to make arrangements for a get-together, only for them to tell me that not only can they not make it as they are on holiday; they had told me of their unavailability and the reason for it only yesterday. The phrase, “I’ve slept since then!” is one of the most overused in my vocabulary.

My memory is not totally useless: only the short term portion and the section that is tasked with remembering names. The phrase, “You know what I’m like with names,” also emerges regularly from my lips. Totally trivial pieces of information that no sane person would actually want to remember get lodged in my cerebral cortex effortlessly. I managed to get good to average grades for my ‘O’ levels with very little revision; not something I would advocate, but it did work for me.

I have nobody to blame but myself for losing this article on the way to work. I know that my memory can take on sieve-like proportions and ideas just slip from my mind to be lost forever. I always carry a notebook with me - and the gadget pen that is attached to my key ring - to record my ideas as they happen. I have even recorded the idea: “if you don’t write it down, then it didn’t happen,” in one of these very notebooks. (My thanks go to Tom Clancy’s character Caroline Ryan for that sentiment.)

The more I write this entry, the stronger the sense of déjà vu that I begin to feel. I am going to have to check that my previous entries do not duplicate this story. Every time I try to think of a title for this article the phrase pops in my mind ‘name escapes me, mind is a blank’ followed by the near certain knowledge that I have already written that one! (A quick check confirms I have used that title before - plagiarised from the television adaptation of Tom Sharpe’s Blott on the Landscape: but the article was about writer’s block.)

The idea that I have forgotten may not be lost forever - if the same idea does pop back into the old grey matter for processing, it will just seem like a new idea. Any sense of déjà vu that I may feel as a result will be dismissed as mere paranoia when I inevitably fail to unearth any evidence to back this feeling up.

My long term memory fares much better. Once a fact has been stored, it is indelible. My mother always asks me if I can recall some distant event from a family holiday - which I usually can - as she holds the opinion that all the hours spent visiting stately homes, castles and museums were wasted on my little sister.

There is one plus side to my sieve of a memory - I forget who the murderer is in detective novels is so get to read them more than once without spoiling the ending for myself.