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!