144. The secret of a good memory is to forget the trivial

Shortly after we moved from North London to Wavendon, I drove, for the first time, along a country lane about a quarter of a mile from our house.  I was in a bit of a hurry but as the lane is narrow and bumpy, I was only doing about 15 miles an hour.

As I rounded a bend, I saw a pretty cottage on the left but what grabbed my attention was the sight of an owl perched on the roof.  I stopped and stared.  This was not the kind of thing one ever saw in London.  

The owl just stared back at me while I took out my phone and took a photo through the rain-spattered windscreen.  

I would have liked to have stayed longer and watch as it flew off but I was late, and so I drove on.  A month later, I drove down that lane again but this time, with Caroline.  

“Do you remember that photo of an owl I showed you?  It was along here somewhere that I saw it.  Just round this bend, I think.”  I slowed down.

“Oh……. It’s there again.  It must have a nest nearby.”

After a short time, Caroline started laughing and suddenly, I was feeling a bit silly.  

“Stop it,” I said.  “But you’ve got to admit it looks very realistic, doesn’t it?”   

“No, not really,” she sniggered.  “I think you may be starting to lose it.”

*******

Caroline’s car seems to have a leaky tyre valve or a slow puncture.  She has had to add air to the same tyre three times in the past month.  The warning symbol was showing as we pulled into a garage this morning to get petrol.

“I know what will save time,” I said.  “You fill it up with petrol while I go and check the air pressure…….”

*******

We bought an ‘intelligent heating control system’ recently.  When it is first installed, it learns your temperature preferences and requirements over the course of a few days as it memorises how the thermostat was set and when the heating was on or off.  The boiler is then left on constant and the house will be at the temperature you need 24/7.

Ramble:

24/7!  I hate that expression and I’m irritated by people who use it instead of “continuously” or “always” almost as much as I scorn those who talk about “back in the day” instead of “in the past” or “once”.  As for those people who preface almost every remark with “Yes, but at the end of the day…,” words fail me.

 I heard this wonderful exchange during a news broadcast in November 2013.  The BBC had sent a reporter and a camera crew to the HQ of the British Red Cross, to cover the collection and organisation of materials to send to The Philippines where Typhoon Haiyan had caused widespread destruction.

Interviewer: Long hours, difficult job?

John Cunningham (Red Cross manager): Yes, we’re doing about 18 hours a day, 24/7.

Something that really got on my nerves was the reporting of the results of the local elections.  Seats no longer just changed hands and parties did not seem to win or lose seats.  

Today, it seems, a party will “sweep to power” if seats are gained or they are “wiped out” if seats are lost.  When and why did politics become so aggressive, unpleasant and antagonistic?  Every issue appears to bring about an extreme polarisation of opinion.  

Anyway, back to our new heating system: What makes our new heating control system different from an ordinary thermostat is that I can alter the setting when I am away by using an app on my phone. 

We spent some time in Yorkshire in March.  Before we left home to drive up the M1, I had set the temperature to only 5°C which meant that even though the boiler was on constant, it would not fire up and so the heating would stay off unless the temperature fell below five.

A few days later, driving home in a blizzard, I checked the app on my phone and saw that the ambient temperature in our house was 11°C.  I turned the thermostat up to 22°C using the app and so, when we arrived two hours later, we walked into a warm, cosy home. (In case you are wondering or even outraged, Caroline was driving.)

The weekend of April 21st and 22nd was hot and the house temperature never dropped below 20°C.  Consequently, I dropped the thermostat setting by ten degrees and hoped that was the last time we would need the central heating until October.

But I was wrong.  On the following Thursday afternoon, I was cold and I reached for my phone to access the app but I couldn’t.  The phone was dead.  I wasn’t too surprised because it is more than three years old and recently, the battery has been losing charge very rapidly.  It had finally died.

I’ve been receiving text messages from Carphone Warehouse for several months telling me that I’m due a phone update and it seemed that this was the right time to do it.

I walked into the store, put the phone on to the counter and told the assistant why I was there.  He disappeared into the back and when he reappeared, he brought a new phone and went through the paperwork with me.  

“Would you like me to transfer all the data for you,” he asked.  

“Yes, but you’ll need to plug it in please because as I told you, it’s dead.”

He got a cable and connected it to the phone.  Ten seconds later, he looked at me and said,

“You know it’s turned off?”  

I realised instantly what had happened.  The previous night, I had been woken at three in the morning by my phone vibrating when an email came through.  To stop that happening again, I had switched it off and then I forgot to turn it on again in the morning.

I’m reminded of the time about six years ago when a friend rang and asked if I had read the email he sent.  

“I’m not sure,” I said.  “I may have done.  What was it about?”

“It was a test to see if you are likely to get Alzheimer’s.”

Do both dementia and Alzheimer’s disease arrive so slowly, surreptitiously and stealthily that, when someone is eventually told that they have one or the other, that information fails to register with them because they are so far gone?  

Or, is there a time when people who suffer from early stage dementia or Alzheimer’s realise that they are in the early stages of that condition and are able to react accordingly?  

I have no idea what the appropriate response to that news would be and so I hope that I’m just a bit forgetful at times.

50. Losing it?

I worry a little these days that I may be ‘losing it’.  How do you know when you start to ‘lose it’?  I suppose that other people know before you do and I guess that, because there is not much that can be done, they just keep quiet about it and you never get to know. 

I’ve just seen a BBC news reporter who may have ‘lost it’ already and that’s sad as she’s only in her mid twenties.  She was standing on the beach at Bognor Regis and she was there to report on a partial eclipse that would be visible as the sun rose over the sea. 

“To see the eclipse you need to be as close as possible to the horizon,” she informed us with some assurance and authority. 

That conjures up an interesting scenario.  “Will you sail a little closer to the horizon please, Captain.  I’d like to get a better view of the eclipse.”

When my father was only four or five years older than I am now, he began to lose it.  He became a little vague and forgetful and he struggled with names.  My mother’s name was Pat and my brother is Peter and whenever he spoke to me during those years my father, in his confusion, always called me, “Peter-pat-terry.”

The first time that Caroline accused me of being senile and possibly ‘losing it’ was about three years ago as we were sitting together under a large parasol on a beautiful, hot Saturday morning at the Cracked Conch bar/restaurant by the sea on Grand Cayman.  Ten metres from us was a set of metal steps going down from the outside bar area into the beautiful clear water.  We watched numerous divers embarking on or coming back from their dives.  Two young boys went down the steps.

“Look at that,” I said, anxiously.  “Those two lads are going diving without scuba gear.” 

Caroline gave me a sad look.  “They’ll be snorkeling then.”

Twice in my life though, I have had a moment of insight that made me certain, for a minute or two at least, that I had special mental powers.  The first time was in February 1967 in the kitchen of a flat in Edinburgh.  It was about eight o’clock in the morning and my friend Ian and I had hitchhiked overnight from Durham.  I can’t remember now why we were there but I do remember that there was a pack of cards in the kitchen.

I took a card from the pack, held it to my chest and said to Ian, ”What card am I thinking of?”  He stared at me intently and then after about ten seconds said, “Five of clubs.”  It was!  We tried to repeat that phenomenon for the next hour but never did.

Some twenty-five years later, at about one o’clock in the morning, I was with Ian again but also with Roger and their wives.  We’d been eating and drinking for the previous five hours.  I left the room for a few minutes and when I returned I was told that they had a story and I was to unravel it by asking questions to which they could answer only ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Does the story concern me? Yes.

Does it take place in Hertfordshire?  Yes.

Is it set in Borehamwood?  Yes.

There it was: “Borehamwood in three.”  Pretty impressive I thought.  I had managed to narrow down the place, out of all the millions places in the world where the story could be set, in just three questions.  Psychic?

No.  They had agreed to answer “Yes” to any question, the last letter of which ended A - K and “No” to a question that ended L – Z and see how the story developed.  Oh how we laughed (and still do)!

Yesterday I said something that produced that same look of pity and concern from Caroline that she had given me at the Cracked Conch. 

“We’re going to be rich,” I told her.  “I’ve had an idea for a gadget.  It’s brilliantly simple, has no moving parts and although no one but me realises it yet, it’s something for which the world has been waiting for a hundred years or more.  All I’ve got to do now is to produce a stereotype and take it on to ‘Dragons’ Den’.”

I put it down to all those years teaching students in the Peoples Republic of Haringey where we always had to actively suppress any thoughts of stereotypes.

It’s a good job that she had left for work and wasn’t at home this morning.  I had installed a new Cable Box for my television and then I phoned the company to ask them to activate it. 

“What can you see in the display panel at the moment?” the woman asked me.  “PL70,” I said.

“OK, that’s good.  Now, it takes about twenty minutes to activate but when it says 999, it’s ready,” she said but forty minutes later I was still waiting for 999.  I phoned again.

“It’s not worked,” I told her.  It says 852.  No, it’s just changed.  Now it says 853.  This is going to take hours.”

She sighed.  “That’s the time you’re looking at.  Press the red button.  What’s it say now?”

“999,” I muttered

I spoke to Mark on the phone on Wednesday. “Did you do that test I sent you?” he asked.

“What test?”

“The one that I sent you a few days ago.”

“Was it an e-mail?”

“Yes.”

A bell was ringing but it was only a little tinkle.  I vaguely remembered something. 

“No,” I said confidently.  “You never sent me anything.  I never got it.  You never sent me anything.”

“Yes I did - on Saturday.”

“No, I haven’t had an e-mail from you for weeks.” 

“Yes I did send you one.  It was about colours.  Hang on a minute and I’ll go to my ‘Sent Box’ and see if it’s there.”

There was a short pause while he must have been looking at his computer screen.  Colours?  Yes, maybe I did remember something about colours but what was it?

“Yes, there it is.”  Mark had left his computer.  “I sent it to you at the same time I sent it to Paul and he told me he’s done it.  You have got it.  I bet you’ve deleted it without reading it.  Look in your ‘Deleted Box’.”

My computer wasn’t on so I kept quiet for about fifteen seconds, pretending that I was looking.

“No.  It’s not there.”

“OK,” Mark sighed.  “I’ll send it again but I bet you did get it.”

“No I didn’t,” I insisted, grumpily.  Maybe I was wrong but I didn’t remember getting it. 

“What’s it about anyway?”

“It’s a test to see if you’ve got Alzheimer’s,” he said.