I began this discussion with myself earlier (link) about memory. I likened human memory to the RAM and ROM found in computers and started to explore issues with ROM – Read Only Memory, the deep memory not needed for day to day living and breathing.
The other day, we were invited to a meal with friends. In fact, we were invited to cook the meal so that our friends could then invite their friends, who we would meet for the first time. No worries – we were in France and the meal took place outside. Menu
The new friends Susan and Jeremy were good company and over the meal a wide range of conversations took place. At one point I was holding court on a story involving alphonso mangoes. We were talking about places we had worked and people we had met at work and I was remembering a fellow lecturer, Shahid Akudi updating me each year (early June I think), about when the mangoes would arrive in Batley, close to our place of work. The mangoes are very seasonal and Shahid always knew when they would be in-store because his relatives in Pakistan would let him know that they were falling from the trees and would therefore be en-route to West Yorkshire.
But the story was just fluff without the name of the mango – which just wouldn’t come to mind. It embarrassed me greatly that I could not bring the fruit’s name to mind during the conversation, especially as it was such an important part of the story. Something blocked it completely. I could see the small packs of cut/prepared alphonso mangoes they had just had in our local Aldi, I could see the huge tin of alphonso mango pulp in my pantry at home, I could even name the second-best mango variety – keta, but could not remember the correct one. Failing to recall the name just made my story fade away without a point.
Another recall-memory issue occurred later during that evening’s meal regarding an author’s name, but people quickly lost interest in listening to me. Very embarrassing.
As I cleaned my teeth for bed that night, I remembered: Alphonso mango and Robin Hobb!
Menu
For anyone interested – the menu was:
A selection of Bruschetta;
Boeuf Bourguignonne, with buttered and minted new potatoes, haricots vert.
Clafoutis Ceris.
Failing to remember 