Hello, what happened to my memory?

It’s one of those things that you fear to tell others about less you discover that you are the only one that suffers the condition. And that it might be an indication that some bigger, negative cerebral disposition. Yeh, I know. Far-fetched. But mid-life memory loss is real.

So real that I was glad when I read about it in the O magazine this morning.

All so familiar and I could laugh at myself at last! So I am not the only one that sometimes momentarily puts the butter on the pantry shelf and the tinned, what’s it called - those yellow vegetables (you see, here we go again!) sweet corn in the fridge. It’s those pieces of tiny information that fails you. Like the time you are packing your gym bag early in the morning and you remember that you haven’t put the deodorant in the gym bag. You go towards the bathroom - literally 10 seconds away – and when you get there you have completely forgotten what you came there to fetch. Good God!

I did once ask an older friend whether he found that he forgot things a lot more than he’d like to admit. His response? ‘’Goodness, yes!” Wonderful, I thought. Never felt such comfort and ease as someone else’s misfortune. Oh, yes. He explained that it was probably because as you get older you are working with and processing a lot of information all at the same time; thinking about so many things, bigger things and invariably those more minor and nonetheless apparent pieces of information fail you under pressure. Hmmm. I liked the sound of that. Yes, my life is so busy and meaningful that I am allowed to pick up the newspaper on my desk as I rush off for a meeting thinking it’s my laptop.....! Yes, that explains it.

Notwithstanding though, I remember every little bit about those most memorable experiences and those fine, comforting things about life – the weekends away and the delicious food devoured over breakfast, lunch and dinner; the very name of that perfume I must get my sister to purchase for me on her next trip out here; the name of that Molton Brown hand cream that I just love but can’t buy here and I have the name at the tip of my tongue ready to disclose to anyone travelling to the UK at any given moment.

Talking of weekends away, those pictures are from the last one. Lunch was sumptuous last Sunday!