The only good thing about growing old is that it’s better than the alternative. On a day when I am aching in places where I didn’t know I had places, it didn’t help that I couldn’t remember where I’d put my memory stick. I know, I know: how is that possible?
It eventually turned up in the exact place I had placed it for safe-keeping, attached to a loudly coloured lanyard. “You can’t forget that,” said my partner. Well, you know the rest.
This is a particularly important memory stick, at least to me, because it contains over 50,000 words of my non-awaited book which does have a name, but I am not going to tell you what that name is in case some other bastard nicks it.
Suffice to say, it’s about me and all the bits of me that I remember which, once you have read the unfortunate loss of my memory stick, you will wonder if I can remember anything at all.
The words I have already written – well, the order in which they appear – represent a pretty grim read to me so Christ alone knows what my loyal reader would make of it. It needs not so much a polish as a complete rewrite and that, in the coming weeks and months, is what I propose to do.
On a more serious point, memory loss of any kind can be worrying. My experience of working in the third sector brought me close to those suffering from such evil diseases as Alzheimers and Vascular dementia. In the dim and distant past, I would laugh at jokes about these awful conditions, but not any more. Whether it’s because I’ve simply grown up or fear ending up with them myself, I don’t know. Either way, there’s nothing funny about them.
I’m not even sure what a memory is these days. We’ve always had these “What’s your first memory?” questions and mine was the winter of 1962/63 when it snowed and the snow stayed until spring. I remember my mum building me a lovely snow man in the back garden. What a time that was. But do I really remember it or do I just remember looking at a photograph of it? I genuinely don’t know and I am at the point where I can’t honestly tell you what my first memory was.
In fact, I don’t remember very much about infant school (literally nothing, actually), junior school (a bit more but not much) and senior school (a lot more but still less than I think I should remember). I can remember, vividly, every single ‘moment’ I had with a member of the opposite sex. Nothing about mathematics but everything about the girl. This isn’t normal, is it? Oh, and every goal I scored in my lengthy footballing parks career. Girls and football, eh?
Past years are mainly empty. I must have done loads of things during my life but they’ve slipped the memory bank. The only holiday I remember in detail was one I had in Canada in 1975 with my best friend Nick and that was because I kept, and still have, a detailed diary which I wrote religiously at the end of each day. Other holidays, just a blur.
So my next book will have lots of gaps in it unless I start remembering about me. As the song goes, don’t forget to remember.
