Forgetfulness - Newly Old

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It was Australia Day yesterday, a mid-week public holiday to celebrate confusion.

Okay, maybe that wasn't the official aim of the day off, but I spent all day feeling like it was Saturday.

This morning I woke understanding that it was back to work, but when I went into the bathroom I went through the weekly ritual of weighing myself. As I peered at the enemy - I mean numbers - on the scale, I remembered it wasn't Monday, my usual weigh-in morning.

Feels like Monday, but it's not, I repeated to myself.

An hour later I walked into the office and was surprised to see my office neighbour Ross sitting at his desk. Ross works four days a week. He's never here on a Monday.

Oh, did it again. It's Thursday.

Is this an age thing?

Tell me the answer on Monday. Or Thursday. Whichever comes first. And by the way, what happened to Sunday?

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Forgetfulness

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I forget what heading I was going to put here

September 8th 2010 06:37

Men are more prone to forgetfulness as they get older than women, according to a new American study.

I shall ask my wife to remember that.

And in case you didn't know, this tendency to ... what was I saying? ... oh, yes, forget things is referred to by scientists as mild cognitive impairment.

I hope only young scientists are studying the phenomenon. I'd hate an elderly scientist to find a cure and then forget to write it down.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Forgetfulness

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Too old to write fiction?

April 17th 2009 04:28

Dame Margaret Drabble

Respected English writer Dame Margaret Drabble has announced that she will not add to her list of 17 novels because she has developed a fear of repeating herself.

This "is what old people do", said Drabble, who is 69.

She will continue to write non-fiction, for which she is equally lauded, but made her decision regarding fiction when she found, while writing her latest book, a part-memoir, that she couldn't remember if she had used an incident from her own life in her writing before.

"What I don't like is the idea that I'm repeating myself without knowing it, which is what old people do endlessly," she told Britain's Radio 4. "The numbers of times I've heard people tell the same stories — the numbers of times I've told the same stories — and you don't really want to start doing that in novels, when somebody can say hmm, you wrote that in 1972."

Drabble, who was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008, is a sister of the writer AS Byatt and the art historian Helen Langdon, and wife of the writer and biographer Michael Holroyd. She also writes plays, screenplays, short stories and biography, and edited two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature.

Drabble said she had told her publisher that she wouldn't be writing any more fiction, "but they don't believe me". Her literary agent, Jim Gill, said the comments were "based on how she feels" and "of course she would reserve the option to change her mind and write a novel if she felt like it".
guardian.co.uk, readersread.com; image: Sam Green, Boston Globe

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