the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

I think that I have a decent memory still, and have a lot of memories amassed over 7 decades, but how reliable is it? A couple of recent experiences have shaken my faith a little.

There is a problem with 1971 where, as I have mentioned here before, I suffered an industrial accident in early ’72 and forgot most of the previous twelve months. I still can’t piece together that bit of my life too well and rely on what others have told me, and some inescapable facts, to reconstruct things.

It is from that period that the second experience came this morning. Back in ’71 there was a car chase movie called Vanishing Point. As a car guy I took myself along to the Odeon in Romford to see it. I think that I went on my own, although I was in a relationship at that time, but I kept dozing off though the film and my recollection of it was that it was boring. However, it was on Talking Pictures yesterday and so I recoded it to watch this morning.

One memory was correct: It was boring, and I stopped watching around the half-way mark and deleted it. But there was something else. Very early in the opening credits comes the name Jimmy Bowen as music supervisor. Now back then I thought that I have an unusual surname, and knew no other Bowens beside my namesake who wrote scripts and books, so how come I don’t remember seeing something as obvious as Jimmy B? Maybe I was looking at something else at that moment in the cinema? It jarred with me seeing it today, yet having had no recollection, so maybe it is just something else that I lost when I got the bang on the head.

The other dodgy memory is TV related. Howard’s Way is on again and the Berkshire Belle and I elected to watch it. Now my memories of seeing the first episodes when it first came out are that I watched it when I lived over in Marks Tey, in darkest Northeast Essex, but looking it up on IMDB it was first shown in September 1985, a year after I had moved to Swindon. The penultimate series on TV when the Berkshire Belle and I got together.

Both are trivial incidents, I know, but do demonstrate how unreliable memories can be. I do check a lot of things using the wonders of the internet, although care needs to be taken even there. Does it matter? Not really, but I do have a nagging concern about dementia and the Wonder of Wokingham and I watch each other carefully for signs having experienced both of our Mothers go that way.

At least what I do remember gives me pleasure. Sure, I have bad memories too, but I leave them alone and take comfort from the good ones. If they are a little flawed I don’t mind, I’m happy with them as they are. After all, I do have a lot of them.