3 minute read
John Nash: Do you remember?
Do you remember?
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John Nash is a retired, well sort of retired, fruit farm manager in Kirdford who enjoys scribbling about life on the farm from the now to days gone by.
unanswered and refuse to emerge from the fog that swirls inside my head. But why? I’m aware that my short-term memory has deteriorated to the level that I can go upstairs to I was just wondering if any of you good folk suffer retrieve something and then stand vacant of useful from problems of that most irrational of human thought as I stare bemused at the bedroom door. functions… memory. Or, I can visit the village shop and return with
Over the last few years, with the fact that we are everything but that which I went there for in the first lasting so much longer place. I had a list – of than our ancestors course I did – but, I forgot managed, we are it. becoming only too aware We’ve all done it, of the problems that can haven’t we? Go on, admit arise from our memories’ it… you have! more erratic behaviour. There again I’m proud Sadly, some fall into the of the fact that when the horrors of dementia and bank requested that my total memory loss. password number should
This is not the path I extend to seven digits I want to travel down here. I instantly recalled my just want to look at the way gran’s Co Op number the memory can play from over 60 years ago. tricks… can tease… can At school in my preaggravate... can be just Eleven Plus years we had plain bloody minded! the register called by us
With the events of the boys shouting out our past year, I, like I imagine names in alphabetical many of you who are of the grey generation, have had Damn… it’s on the tip of my tongue… order. It stuck. Now, 70 years on I can repeat so much more time to kill. I every boys name in that sit staring at that flickering box, trying to make class, all 40 of them! Their faces refuse to appear, sense of the doom and gloom that is so much part but their names will be with me forever. of journalism in modern times. I try to read a So goes the workings of this wonder called newspaper, but that just echoes the opinions of the memory. It brings us silent laughter and newsreader on the tele… so I give up. remembered tears. Joys of past friendship and the
I flick through the pages to the crossword. Ahh! At pain of great loss. Most of all ,though, as we age, it last something that gets me thinking. I glance at the frustrates us, taunts us and dares us to try and clues. Simple! They seem quite easy. Then with pen understand it. poised I set to. Never mind. Why worry? Tomorrow we will have
Bugger! I know the answer to that. It’s… it’s on forgotten anyway! the tip of my tongue. Oh come on! Of course I know Now… three down: six letters… ‘Who was the it. Damn it… it’s only got five letters. jester in Hamlet?’ Ahh! Just a minute… don’t tell
And so it continues. Words of ten letters fly from me… I know this… darn it… I know him so well! the pen, while short, pithy little posers sit John Nash
