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Tuesday 17 September 2013

Lost image - 17 June 2012

It being September 17, I ran through the 17th of each month.

All was fine until I came to Sunday June 17. No image.

I knew where I was on that day: I had travelled to my parents after a conference on June 16. My wife and I returned home on June 18.

That is where I was, but I feared that the tag was something routine, like the place we had gone for lunch. If that was the case, then there was little that would trigger the recall.

I had been wondering when I would enter the next phase of this process of remembering every day that passes: dealing with blanks on my mental calendar.

As the reviews of the months from January 2011, before I began deliberately remembering memory tags, consist mainly of blanks then that is how it will be if blanks start to appear.

But I am not ready to give up yet. Exploring the images either side of the blank day gave me a lot more context and reminded me of what was going on in my life at that time and my mood. From this I knew I had seen my sister that weekend.

As the tag probably had something to do with going out for the day, I thought of the places we liked to visit. This brought up nothing.

As usual in these situations, it finally came back to me like a friend's face emerging from a crowd.

We had a barbecue at my sister's house. My memory tag was her partner playing the guitar in the garden.

So a special day. Well worth remembering.