An Important Topic

Now, what was I going to write about for this edition of Rant? It is, I seem to recall, a very important topic, one that needs a thoroughly good airing.

Ah, yes, now I remember: the problems of memory-loss in the over-fifties.

Let me tell you that, through extensive research, I’ve accumulated some really telling revelations. When I lay my hands on the damn notes I took, I’ll share them with you. I put them in an on-line file, I think. They must be lurking somewhere in my computer. As soon as I remember how to retrieve them, I’ll be on my way.

I’ll call my daughter to help. She understands this technical stuff. Wait a minute, though, I’ve just remembered she’s away this weekend. In Finland. Or is it Iceland. It’s somewhere with ‘land’ on the end, other than England, where I believe she still lives.

Meanwhile, the subject of this article will have to be classified as a ‘coming attraction’.

I’ll write instead about my recent holiday, which I spent across the pond in ….. Hang on a minute, the name will come to me soon. It was some time ago, at least a week, or maybe two. I do recall having a good time, wherever it was, and I have some compelling observations to make.

We met, through existing friends, lots of interesting new ones. When my wife gets home she’ll remind me of their names. Right now I’m not sure where she is. She did tell me she had to go out, but as she says nowadays, usually in an unnecessarily exasperated tone: “Anything I say to you these days seems to go in one ear and out the other.”   “Well, there’s little in between to stop it,” is often my snide response.

It doesn’t help that as well as steadily losing my remaining marbles my hearing is increasingly impaired, too.

“Why don’t you turn the sound on,” I told her last night as we watched a favourite show on television.

“It is on,” she said, testily.

“Well turn it up a bit, then.”

“It’s already at the top end of the volume,” she said. “I’ll be deaf myself at this rate.”

I’m afraid this kind of exchange takes place all the time now. I should have suspected something was wrong when she reached for the ear-plugs she keeps on the table next to her armchair.

I think we were watching Game of Thrones. This, I can tell you, is a truly exciting series, with lots of violence and oodles of graphic sex. I would enjoy it even more if I could work out who’s doing what to whom and why, but each new episode seems to bear little or no relation to the previous one. Anyway, by then I’ve forgotten what happened earlier.

I’ll sign off for now. But bear with me, I’ll be back. For now there’s something I’m meant to be doing in the garden. Don’t ask me what it is. It’ll come to me when I get out there.