You may notice that I have done precisely what I told everyone else not to do at the end of my last post. "Don't procrastinate", said I. And lo, I procrastinated. Mitigating circumstances there may be, but your true blogger is always ready with a new entry. Not I. A blog can't be, for obvious reasons, a genuine diary. So the catchcry goes round - "What on earth will I blog about next?" Since age is one of my excuses, I'll note that I am taking steps to prevent the onset of senility. To learn something new, we are told, creates new synapses in the brain. So, for my "learning" process, I've decided to memorise a poem now and again. I like doing it, if I like the poem. There are a lot of hidden gems out there too. To date I've memorised exactly two. First was the famous folk ballad, "My Grandfather's Clock". Love it, and it was sheer serendipity to find the words in a second-hand antique magazine. The second is one of those hidden gems I mentioned. "The Horses" by Edwin Muir. It tells a story, and I l-o-v-e stories. How survivors of a nuclear Armageddon discover a herd of horses. Or rather how the horses find them. But now, I have to find another poem to commit to memory, but this time I think I'll cheat and go back to a couple of favourites from past years and re-memorise them. After all, there's no point in the exercise if one doesn't like the lines. And I'm gracious enough not to hurry, being old enough to have learned to give myself time! Pity I can't remember the names of occasional people, and have these blank spots where something entirely escapes me. It's no good, of course, to concentrate and try to chase it down. It will pop up at some time when I'm NOT thinking of it. A scientist on a T.V. program once said, and I do remember this, that when we work out how this happens we'll have advanced a long way toward understanding the workings of the human brain. In the meantime, irritatingly, I still remember phone numbers, books I read years ago, and the precise dates of many events in my life. Equally irritatingly, I have forgotten what it was my husband asked me to remind him about tomorrow. He has this wonderful habit of relying on MY memory, and my short-term memory is no longer to be relied upon. And he always asks me to remind him about things when there's neither pen nor paper within sight or reach. Yes indeed, I am at the point where I must WRITE THINGS DOWN. Now, if I can just train hubby to write notes to himself too, we may yet cope with this particular disfunction of old age. In the meantime, happy remembering everybody!
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