Busy times

It has been a busy few days.

This presents interesting challenges in this process of remembering every day that passes.

With so much going on, I am selecting my memory tags with care. I want one, or at most two, images pinned to each day of my mental calendar and so they have to connect to key aspects of the day.

So for 27 March 2012 the image is sitting at a picnic table as my wife waves to me. I am working on my laptop. My wife has just arrived with my parents and nephew. This reminds me that I was able to meet up with them at a park around lunchtime between meetings. It is a genuine event, not a construct. I never invent the image, but select it.

Another consideration is I can choose the feelings to associate with the day. On 26 March 2012, my wife and I spoke at a conference. My wife was speaking in her second language and became a bit lost in her notes. I was willing her to do well from the side of the room. My memory tag is someone coming up to her afterwards to discuss her talk. She had made a good impression. I want to encourage her in future and this positive memory is much more valuable than the nervousness I shared with her.

There is a danger of losing past days when too much is going on. I didn't have the time or spare energy to carry out the reviews that are part of my usual routine. When I was able, there were blanks that took a while to fill in. I'm not too concerned about this as long as I can fill in the blanks when I do have the time and energy. I don't want this process to be a distraction from living.

The final point is that being able to remember these full days is important. I am better equipped to do so now.

Something is missing

I am now well used to the feeling when I am missing the memory tag that I had chosen to remember a particular day.

When looking back, sometimes I find the day is blank on my internal calendar, even if I can remember some of the other aspects of the day. Sooner or later the image I had pinned to that day comes back to me.

That feeling of something being missed served me in good stead last weekend. My wife and I were leaving home for a conference, planning to call in on my parents on the way past.

As we sat in the car I had that same feeling of something missing.

I knew I had turned everything off that I should be off and locked up. I was certain we hadn't forgotten anything and I resisted the urge to give in to uncertainty and check.

But this time, I recognised my mind was telling me that I was not remembering the full story and I should go back. What I needed to see was not the things my conscious mind told me were fine.

So I went.

On the doorstep lay my wife's leather jacket. I had dropped it when I locked the door.

I went back into the flat as well, just in case. I had been correct to believe there was nothing wrong there.

This is an important lesson. If I had been more alert, I would have realised that my wife's jacket was missing when I placed mine on the parcel shelf of the car.

I did not realise consciously, but this process of remembering has made me more sensitive to when I am not remembering what I need to. And to trust that feeling.

New reality

How long does it take me to meld with my location?

It seems that three months makes me well entrenched. Our new flat now feels like it is ours, perhaps helped by the visitors we have had in recent weeks, who do see it as our flat.

This morning as I snoozed, I tracked back through all my memory tags with no difficulty.

Indeed, the start date of this process of remembering every day that passes - 17 December 2011 - is no longer a cut-off as I have reclaimed most of the time back to when we left my wife's country on 19 November and have tags for most of those days until then.

The time before we left is still a blur of mixed memories, distant in space and time. But at some point I will make a project of reclaiming those days too.

This is my new reality: where I am now and being able to remember what has happened.

Boing

Its definitely not worth worrying if a memory tag evades me when I'm reviewing the past days.

I worked late last night and was tired when I went for a run by the river this afternoon. So recalling the images pinned to my mental calendar was not taking place under the best of conditions.

I was stuck for 20 March, just last Tuesday. I remembered the day, what had happened, that I had been in a rush to leave the office because... boing! The image pinged onto the calendar.

I met my wife at a café by the river. My image for the day was chaining up my bike outside.

Eight days a week

I find it useful to think back to what I was doing this day in previous weeks, until I began this process of remembering every day that passes.

A week is a useful period of time, but it is the one aspect of the calendar that is totally arbitrary.

A year is given by the time it takes the earth to orbit the sun - and before the earth's orbit was understood, it was given by the cycle of seasons that results.

A month is given by the time it takes the moon to complete the passage of its phases, linked to its orbit of the earth.

A day is given by the time it takes the earth to revolve once on its own axis.

All were observable by all cultures.

But a week is not set in the heavens, though it is set in the old testament of the Bible of Christians and Torah of Jews.

Other civilisations have used other lengths for the cycle between a day and a month, from four to ten days, apparently.

Seven days almost fits into a lunar month four times, but not precisely enough to be a realistic explanation of its origin.

It may have more to do with our capacity to remember sets of data, which has been said to have a natural limit of seven - though plus or minus two according to some research.

The Beatles sang of eight days a week as cramming in more love than a week normally allows, but there is no clear reason why the week is not eight days. It was in ancient Rome under the nundinal system, until Emperor Constantine adopted the biblical seven days.

Not gone

Our friends from Southbeach came to visit at the weekend, one couple with their two sons staying with us in our flat, another couple camping nearby.

We cooked breakfast for everyone on Sunday 18 March 2012, then went into town, where there was a science fair.

We said our goodbyes afterwards and I returned home with my wife to the flat, the mess and the quiet.

As I washed up and put away the pots and plates, I thought back over the weekend.

Before beginning this process of remembering, I think there would have been a hint of sadness as the glow of energy and happiness of the weekend started its slow fade.

But now I realised it was different as I reviewed the day and selected the key images that would be the memory tags to pin to my internal calendar.

Adrian, four-years-old, at the science fair, where he had joyfully run from experiment to experiment, having his photograph taken dressed in a white lab coat and over-sized goggles.

Simon, six, spotting a one-legged homeless man in a wheelchair playing a tin whistle and running after his mum for a coin to give to him.

This was a glimpse of their natures that will become part of my memory of them as I watch them grow from afar.

The past is over, but it is not gone if I remember it.

Thanks for the memory

After a week of feeling this process of remembering every day that passes was reaching a natural end, I was given a boost last weekend by the rewards it brings.

Friends from Southbeach visited and on Saturday 17 March 2012 we went to Easton, calling in at a nearby deer park first for a walk.

One of my friends asked when I had last been there and was impressed that I was able to say immediately, 14 January.

My wife and I took our friends to the café we had eaten at that day. I had made a point of remembering the car park options and so we were able to discuss whether two hours in the short stay car park would be enough, or whether we needed the more distant, but cheaper, long stay.

I remembered where we had sat in the café and what we had eaten. Perhaps not too remarkable as it was only two months ago, but my wife didn't remember and asked if I could.

This memory successs was a stark contrast to reminiscing about our friends' last visits. We tried to remember when we had visited the nearby town of Sanver. I had it down as years ago, but it was only last year. I have added a memory tag to my mental calendar for 2011 so I should remember that visit more accurately in future.

Back on track

After several days of feeling I was slipping on ice as I tried to access the memory tags that were once firmly attached to my mental calendar, I feel I am back on track.

Just considering the idea that my mind was rebelling from remembering because doing so brought home my mortality seemed to put an end to the problem.

Laying down to sleep, I went for a big review, scanning back through the days and recalling the same day each month. So, what wer my images for 15 March, 15 February and 15 January. Then back a day.

It was all still there and only a few days didn't come back instantly, just requiring association with the surrounding days to bring back the memory tag.

The perspective of the passage of time through this exercise is often surprising and, in that, rewarding.

Remembering is definitely better than not remembering. I have to accept my days are numbered and remembering them is part of relishing life.

I hope that means I am over this wall.

Mind rebelling

I am wondering why this process of remembering every day that passes has hit a wall.

Is my mind rebelling from remembering because doing so reminds me of my mortality?

I am repeatedly struck in my reviews of the days since I began this process nearly three months ago how relentless the flow of time is.

As the great philosopher Ozzy Osbourne once sang: "Today was tomorrow yesterday.  It's funny how the time can slip away."

Is forgetting most days once they are done - as I did until so recently - part of our survival mechanism?

Focus on the present and the choice memories of the past, but not every day as it slips through my fingers. Is that it?


Knowing where I was last week, last month and a growing sense of the years before is a reminder that now is a point an a timeline where in the future vitality will be increasingly lost and in the past opportunities have gone forever.

I will never have a child. My friend David is a little older than I am and his daughter is five weeks old tomorrow. I married late and the few short years where it may have happened have gone. With the birth of David and Sandra's Laura, being childless, which I accepted, is now a much starker reality.

Looking back, I do not regret the decisions that have led me here. Indeed, if I had followed a different path I would have been married and started a family in my twenties. I could have children now at university, probably a divorce and perhaps years of regret.

I would certainly not have lived the life I have. And there are many opportunities I did take that have not only given me memories, but made me the person I am today, with the skills, knowledge and, to some degree, wisdom.

But can I face remembering it all? Is my mind rebelling because we are supposed not to?

The wall

I am hoping this post is a marker of an obstacle that I will overcome, rather than the beginning of the end of this experiment in remembering every day that passes.

But I have to admit that these past few days I've found I keep coming up with blanks as I review the memory tags pinned to my mental calendar. I thought it was too much wine and not even sleep, but less of the former and more of the latter hasn't resolved the problem.

When I have difficulty it is with recent tags rather than old ones, which makes it feel that it is this process of remembering that is breaking down. A few times I've felt it better not to review past days than to suffer the frustration of missing images. The pleasure of the perspective remembering every day has been giving me changes to distress on these occasions.

I've felt I'm tempted to let the days go, to accept a few blanks; or to write down the memory tags before I forget some of them forever.

So far I've not given into that temptation; laying down to sleep last night I was able to scan back through the past three months, finding all the images.

But there is no point making this experiment an ordeal; I may be forced to accept that despite the feeling that remembering was becoming easier, I've come to my limit.

At the moment I feel a bit like the narrator in the story "Flowers for Algernon", who was given a drug that boosted his intelligence, only for it to drop away again.

I may be returning to living with a fog of memories, unable sometimes to remember what I was doing this day last week, this day last month. It makes me sad to think that may be true.

But I hope my brain will develop a better way of forming memories, that the process of remembering will be transformed. I hope I have hit a wall that will crumble if I persevere.

Drawing a blank

Too much wine, not enough sleep.

That's what I blame for the unpleasant feeling of drawing blanks yesterday for several days in the review of the memory tags on my internal calendar.

Those older than a month now seem to be firmly entrenched. It was more recent tags that gave me a problem, even those for last week.

At times like this, I remind myself that it will great feeling when they come back and not to worry about it.

I also told myself it was probably down to having a glass or two of wine for too many consecutive nights while working late and missing out on sleep. I was tired.

All the techniques for remembering came into play and the missing four or five images were recaptured.

With a couple it was an echo that finally helped the missing tags come back.

I went to sleep still drawing a blank for the image for 13 February. This morning it was still blank. I could remember the surrounding days and remembered some of the things I had done on that day, but not the specific image I had chosen to mark it out.

It was only when picking up a Charles Dickens book to read with my wife that it came back to me. It had been a while since we had read the book. With that thought I remembered that on 13 February I picked up my guitar for over a year (I had only recently collected it after we moved back here to my country).

It felt great to remember and I mentally embossed the date onto the neck of the guitar.

Nearly three months into this process of remembering and I've not yet had to give up on any day.

It felt close this time, but hopefully that was just down to the wine and lack of sleep.

Collective memory failure

I met friends in Southbeach a few weeks ago (okay, 24 February - I might as well be specific, now that I can).

We tried to remember the details of our meeting up over recent years, what we had done, where we had walked.

It was hard. Events merged together and were misremembered. Collectively we could paint a fuller picture, but it was a little scary how much of the past was a mish-mash of vague snippets.

In the future I hope to be able to remember all we did this last time, even if reclaiming the memories from before I began this process remains a challenge.

Funny words

When I caught the wrong bus on Wednesday 7 March, I was intending to get off at the cemetery stop.

This prompted remembrance of childhood fascination with words. Why did we bury people at a semi-tree?

And why were people called human beans? Were they related to baked beans?

I still have to think before saying the word "gesture". As a joke my father used to pronounce it with a hard g. How was I to know that was wrong?

I read avidly as a child and would sometimes bleep over words I didn't understand, knowing I would start to see them everywhere and would work them out from context. Or eventually I'd reach for the dictionary if it was too much of a distraction.

It meant sometimes I knew a word, but not the correct pronunciation, which could last for many years.

The director of a play I appeared in about 12 years ago complemented me on my first rendition of the speech that was to open the play, but had to tell me where to put the stress on "plethora".

There is a word that continues to sound strange to me. Whenever I say it I feel I must have swapped the consonants over, even when I haven't: car park.

Remembering bus routes

I dropped the car at the garage yesterday for its annual service and caught the bus home.

I took the bus at the shopping and cinema complex we sometimes visit in town.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that although the bus passes by the stop at the end of our road, it sails on by as it is the link bus to the out-of-town car park.

I had a long walk in the rain to reflect on why this vital fact had slipped my mind.

My memory tag for the day includes this walk so I remember not to take that bus again - particularly when I'm with my wife.

Hopefully remembering the experience will be more effective than remembering the map of bus route.

Dying every day

If we are the sum of our experiences, then the person I am now is different to the person I was yesterday.

I can look back, day by day, to when I began this process of remembering, like a clock winding backwards.

Further back, the dates are more likely to be blank than filled with memories.

But I see myself growing younger, becoming a child. My loved ones rejuvenating.

Those days are gone. Those people changed.

Every day I die and become a new person in adding a layer of experience.

Older and, if I learn from my mistakes, perhaps wiser.

My parents

My parents visited for the weekend. My father is 79 years old and drove the 180 miles to see us. He is very active, despite still suffering from injuries sustained as a child in the second world war. He is a writer and has embraced computers in recent years, which is particularly impressive given he does not use them intuitively but writes detailed notes for every procedure.

My mother is 72 and not as active as she used to be. Since we last saw her, she has taken to pushing a shopping trolley everywhere for support due to arthritis in her knees. She doses herself with pills and cider vinegar that are supposed to help, and gives herself electric shocks with a thumb operated device.

My mother has always been a talker, but tells her stories to so many relatives she has often repeated herself. It has struck me how my father doesn't really seem to notice this. For years they have had the habit of telling me the same stories time and again, as if for the first time, even on consecutive days when we are staying with them.

My mother's memory was noticeably worse this time. She asked perhaps twenty times if we had visited our friends in Seaton since we had arrived back in the country and if they were coming to see us.

While she is forgetting things, she also has false memories. She was convinced she had been with me in my car when someone crashed into the back of it two years ago. In retelling the story, she has placed herself at the scene.

Her spatial memory is being affected. She won't travel into town on her own anymore to visit the shops because she is worried she won't find her way home.

But she remembers more active times without rancour, reminding us as she pushes her trolley of our long walks on family holidays.

Remembering remembering

Perhaps I was becoming complacent after finding it much easier than expected to remember every day that passes.

Looking back over the past 10-day window, the memory tags for Monday and Tuesday were a blank. I should have made more effort to consolidate them.

It was not so much that I couldn't remember what I had done of those days - they were still fresh. It was the memory tag that eluded me.

Sometimes I remember the act of remembering, of deciding - usually as I review the day as I lay down to sleep - that the memory tag for today will be a particular image.

Sometimes the day links with other days, joining the dots of the narrative of the story of my life. I remember how it struck me at the time of remembering that the day was linked to another.

Sometimes during the course of the day I take a step back and consciously decide to capture the image of the moment. This happened on 3 March as I sat with my wife and my parents, who had come to visit, enjoying tea and scones outside a café on an unexpectedly sunny day, watching sparrows, blue tits and chaffinches hop onto the tables to peck up crumbs near to where we sat.

I not only remember the moment, but deciding to remember the moment.

My memory tags for Monday and Tuesday came back to me soon enough.

Now remembering they were a little difficult to remember helps me to remember them!

Joining the dots

A new aid to remembering every day of my life has emerged recently: joining the dots.

My principal technique for remembering is to pin an image that captures the essence of the day to my mental calendar. Reviewing these memory tags in subsequent days entrenches them in my long-term memory. All the same, sometimes looking back it takes a moment or two to remember the image for a particular day. The fact there are no plot holes in life helps me to bring back the image in the end.

What I find is also helping is joining the dots between memory tags.

As an example, it was 10 February when our friend Sandra gave birth to Laura. On my mental calendar a line stretches from this day to 29 February, when my wife and I had recovered from our colds and were able to visit Laura for the first time.

This is a step beyond being able to view the narrative to a story in my life. It is an aide memoir. If I am stuck with remember 29 February, I can feel there is a line stretching back to 10 February and Laura's birth. Sensing the line - the fact there is a line - helps me to recall the image that was temporarily out of reach.

It is a short cut. Stuck for the 29 February? Remember 10 February.

This wouldn't be useful if remembering these linkages between days was an extra burden. It's not something I'm forcing. There are few days on my mental calendar linked by these lines.

The joins that do exist between the dots have emerged naturally.

They are another way my mind is helping me to remember.

Remembering to listen

Conversation between couples can degenerate into arguments with undignified rapidity because a phrase invokes memories of past conflicts.

They have been described as "toothpaste" arguments, where a comment about leaving the top off the toothpaste leads to a tennis game of volleys about the faults of the other.

I've seen bickering couples and they are all the same. Offense is taken not at what is said, but how it is said. A comment can be the start of a familiar chain of criticism and sometimes it seems quicker to jump to offense being taken without the journey to get there.

Saddest of all is rehashing the argument in an attempt to convince the other where the fault lies: "I said... then you said..."

I so don't want to be part of that couple.

But I had just that feeling when I took the wrong bus in the Capital two weeks ago. Because of my error we had to walk for 5 minutes rather than dropping right in front of our destination. A simple mistake - I recognised the number of the bus because it was one we took often. What I forgot was we needed to go a little further on this occassion.

Even writing this I feel the emotion of hurt at the unwarranted criticism and patronising instruction to check in future. I struggle to think of anyone else who would speak to me in such a way, coming up only with my parents or a teacher when I was six years old.

At the same time I am angry because I know that with friends - or in past relationships - such a mistake would be no issue at all. Instead of sucking joy out of the day, it would have passed in a second as nothing of importance.

I am breathless at the injustice. With the situations reversed, I would have accepted the mistake cheerfully. I know for a fact that I accept far worse errors with words of reassurance not castigation.

Explaining I don't want to be spoken to in this way does no good. In fact, it generally leads to a circle of justifications and recriminations. "I said... you said..."

Nooooo.

Then I had a thought.

The hurt I feel, I think most partners feel, in these situations is fundamentally because I cannot understand how my wife could speak to me in this way if she loved me.

That old chestnut of it is not what is said, but how it is said.

My responses are no doubt as hurtful, even if I know that I wouldn't go down this bickering path if she hadn't started it. "You said... so I said..."

The clue, however, surely lies in the fact I am made to feel that I am six again.

In truth, it is not my wife that makes me feel that way. It is my reaction to her in these situations.

Certainly that childhood feeling of injustice, hurt and anger is real. But I am no longer six.

So I decided the next time not to argue back but to listen to the criticism. To explore it. I may be disappointed that my wife is sometimes so annoyed by little things, but is the underlying cause that she does not love me? Or is it just her feet are tired and she's really pissed at the thought of having to walk even five minutes more?

My memory tag for the 21 February is one word: listening.

It was the first opportunity I had to put this approach into practice. It passed off okay.