After 3 days I reckon that being 80 is no big deal. There have been no major changes; my back is still bent and I still walk like a question mark. I recognized and greeted a couple of old acquaintances yesterday – they are both pushing 90 and I’m not sure they knew who I was – my appetite is great and I can still read the small print. What did happen is that this morning, whilst doing the crossword, I found myself sitting with the answer to a clue hanging off the end of my tongue and not making it all the way to the pen.
That’s the only change I can detect, an inkling of slow retrieval from the vast storage system I shlep around with me. The filing system is full, most of the drawers overflowing. ‘Family and Friends’ is pretty full, ‘Engineering and Information Technology’ is bursting and has a notice hanging on the front – “no new information accepted here’. ‘Culture’ has small spaces available under books, music and writing, but the worst of the lot is ‘Department of Useless Information’ which houses stuff for use in quizzes, crosswords and the like. It has huge globs of information hanging from it hoping it will still be called on to provide an answer. There is no ‘Full’ notice so I keep pushing more and more in there hoping it will find a place. But I’m starting to think it’s a waste of time.
We all build these huge storage systems for ourselves, convinced they are made of concrete and will be there forever. It’s not like that at all. They are made of some kind of Jello and are highly susceptible to outside influence. In extreme cases they melt and leave one with no memory at all.
The character I couldn’t think of in the story of Jason and the Argonauts was Helle. How could I forget him?