Lapses of Memory
Yesterday afternoon it was my turn to present a paper at our bi-weekly cosmology journal club. Because this is Study Week – that’s my excuse anyway – I forgot about it until I was reminded in late morning. I decided on a paper to present but it was only when I started that I was reminded that I had done that paper before, last year.
I had no recollection at all of having done that paper before. I didn’t have time to do another one, so I went through the paper again. Perhaps I’ll end up doing that paper once a year, like Groundhog Day! The last two years of pandemic have played havoc with my memory, so ‘ll put this lapse down to that. I’ve had to do so many things that maybe my old brain can’t cope with it all.
Maybe I’m just getting too old. I’ll be 60 next summer.
On the other hand, this morning I was chatting some colleagues before forming the academic procession for a conferring ceremony. One of the people there was Italian and he complained that the robe hire company couldn’t find appropriate academic dress for the University of Padova, where he graduated, so he had just been given a random set of robes. I visited Padova many times in the past, until my colleague and co-author Francesco Lucchin passed away about 20 years ago.
While we waited for the procession to start we chatted about places in the City. Amazingly I could remember the names and addresses of various restaurants and other establishments, the precise location of the Physics Department Galileo Galilei, and all kinds of other details about the place that are still intact in my head.
Moreover, when we were inside the Aula Maxima and the conferring ceremony began (parts of which are in Latin) I found myself sitting there recalling the first lines of Book II of Virgil’s Aeneid, which I did for O-level many moons ago:
Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant
inde toro pater Aeneas sic orsus ab alto:
Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem,
Troianas ut opes et lamentabile regnum
eruerint Danai, quaeque ipse miserrima vidi
et quorum pars magna fui.
I wish we could have better control over what we remember and what we forget. If the problem is that there’s a finite amount of space in one’s head, it would be nice to have a spring clean every now and again to create a bit more room, jettisoning some old junk to let new things in. Unfortunately I don’t think it works like that.
Anyway, I almost forgot until all this Latin reminded me that today is the Idus Martiae (“the Ides of March”) so here is the traditional extract from the First Folio Edition of Carry On Cleo, starring the sublime Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar delivering one of the funniest lines in the whole Carry On series. The joke may be nearly as old as me, but it’s still a cracker…
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In the Dark 
March 16, 2022 at 9:11 am
I think your short-term memory is the first to go.
In addition, I think your short-term memory is the first to go.
A collaborator refers to these lapses as ‘senior moments’, which is a good description. On Monday I had two in the space of a few minutes. First of all I ‘shoplifted’ stuff from Tesco’s – forgot to lift it out of my basket at the checkout, and only noticed it when I got back to my car. Had to go back in to pay for the items. When I came out again I nearly got into the wrong car – much to the alarm of the owner…..
March 16, 2022 at 11:49 am
If only I could remember all things the way I remember lyrics from 80s pop songs, or old TV adverts…