Limbering up

I am now over 6 months into this process of remembering every day that passes - the counter on this blog says I began 185 days ago.

Every day of my mental calendar has a memory tag pinned to it.

Recently I have found the most evasive tags are those for the past month or two. More historic memories, which I have reviewed more times, are now well established.

So I have varied my review technique, which I generally employ in the morning as I wake up or when cycling into work.

I scan back through the tags for the past two or three of weeks. The tags may not come to mind immediately, but as I can generally remember the events of each day wholesale, it is more a case of remembering the particular image I had selected to represent it.

I then review this day (Tuesday, for example) for every week until I began this process. More recently, I've been including the two preceeding days as well (so recalling Sunday, Monday and Tuesday tags for each week).

My new technique is to reverse the order. Instead of scanning back through time, I start with the historic memories and work towards the present.

It doesn't take much time as the images come so readily to mind, although the various sensations and perspectives that this review gives me continue to surprise me and make the process so enriching.

When I come to the more ethereal memory tags, my mind is well and truly limbered up.

Broken finger

So we visited our friends in Southbeach on the weekend of 19 May.

Damien told us about the surgery to have his broken finger stapled backed together.

"Did Sarah tell you I had broken it?" he began.

She had - plus they had both visited us soon after it happened, yanked to breaking point when he was walking their dog. We sat next to each other in a café on 17 March when his young son accidentally pulled on it as he got up, raising a great cry from Damien.

"Yes, you visited us soon afterwards. Do you remember the café in Easton where Adrian nearly broke it off for good?"

"Ah, yes."

I felt smug at my improved memory.

But I still managed to forget about his recent surgery when I shook his hand as we were leaving.

Funny leaflet - love every drop

This is a funny image of a genuine leaflet from the UK water company Anglian Water.

Love every drop. Make the msot of your sewerage services.

Yum.

Packages of memory tags

So 168 days into this process of remembering every day that passes and I've still not lost a day.

I have various techniques for recording memory tags on my internal calendar, reinforcing them and recalling them if they are elusive.

One method that has emerged recently is packages of memory tags.

So Sunday 13 March was a sunny day and we walked to a beer garden by the river.

The weather them for Monday 14 March was it chucked it down with rain and my memory tag is sheltering with my wife at the bus stop.

And Tuesday 15 March, we had a freak hailstorm and I had to shelter in a pharmacy, where I had gone for cough mixture as that is something that has been afflicting me recently.

If I have any trouble recalling any of those days, remembering the surrounding days reminds me of the weather theme and that's it.