But, once in a
while, and often quite at random, a little gap will show itself and, when that
happens, it can be frustrating, niggling, and hard to shake off.
I have lots of
gaps in my memory and more as I go on. I think the stuff I went through earlier
in the year ushered in a sort of brain fog, or at least a fairly dense brain
mist. The effect has perhaps been less on my actual memory and more on my
recall. I know the stuff is in there, sitting safely enough, but pulling it up
and back out into the world can occasionally be a slow and painstaking process.
But back to the
memory gaps. I landed on one yesterday that is still toying with my mind so I
thought I'd type out something about it to see if that loosened the logjam a
little.
The memory concerned
listening to music at Granny and Grandad’s house.
Perhaps it was
inspired a little by the sad loss of Donal Lunny on Friday, because the music we
listened to at Granny’s house was of a traditional nature. But it was a sort of
trad music that preceded the wonderful innovations that Donal and his peers
brought to the form in the Seventies and thereafter.
It happened
like this. I was in the kitchen yesterday afternoon, making a chilli and listening
to my current Le Carre audiobook, when a
song jumped into my head, as if from nowhere. It was an old trad song by the
Clancy Brothers and, I think, Tommy Makem too. ‘The Whistlin’ Gypsy.’
The Whistlin’
Gypsy came over the hill
Down to the
valley so shady
He whistled
and sang ‘til the green woods rang
And he won
the heart of a lady…
From nowhere,
the song arrived, complete across the decades. And with it the memory. Sitting in Granny’s listening to the
song, five or six years old. But not only that, the other songs on the record
waltzed into my memory too. “If it wasn’t for the weavers, what would you do?”
“Bless all moonshiners and bless all moonshine.”
It was a Sunday
afternoon and there I was, listening to the songs. We probably did it on
several Sunday afternoons. A fond memory.
But here’s the
thing, the annoying thing. There’s a significant gap in the memory. Granny didn’t
have a record player. Not that I can remember. No record player. Yet the record
played and played. My uncle had a record player (West Side Story) and we had a
record player (Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest hits) but I can’t remember Granny
ever having a record player. Still the record played and played…
Yes, I do
realise that I’m writing around in circles. That’s to reflect the fact that my
brain is doing that exact same thing. It’s a sort of a ‘Does Not Compute’ gap
in a strong memory. The record is there, the music is there, but where was the
record player? Where did it sit? Where was it plugged in? What other records
could there have been?
Easy, you might
say, you listened to it on the radio. No record player. But, no, that’s not how it was. The memory is
strong and clear. The repeated playing of the song, and all the other similar
songs. It is interspersed with other things. ‘The Golden Shot’ on the telly.
Lord Halifax’s Ghost book on the shelf in the corner, with the scary skeleton
in the top hat on the cover. The pictures, both visual and aural, are fairly well
defined. Except there is no record player. More than that, and I’m going to
get a bit silly now, there seems to be no possibility of a record player. Only
the songs.
This should be
a nothing thing, something to go ‘hmm’ over just once and then move on. But it
is interesting to me. It is an identifiable hole in my memory and my brain
pokes at it like my tongue would poke at the gap left by an extracted tooth. If
I can remember so much else, why can’t I remember that one part? And, to go
further, is any of the memory real or is it all concocted from a series of unrelated
things that happened at another time and in another place? All is possible. All
is unfathomable.
Perhaps my preoccupations
with something so very trivial have to do with aging and recent illness. How my
brain doesn’t quite do everything as fluidly as it did last year or the year
before that.
Or perhaps it’s
just because it’s a Bank Holiday over here and I just have too much time on my
hands.
Either way, I am sure it
will resolve itself soon in the usual, natural, way.
I will forget
all about it.
