THE dratted short-term memory loss continues to hammer remorselessly on the splintering security doors of my cowering mind.
But at least the other worrying thing isn’t as bad as it used to be . . .
Like the time I checked in at Ronaldsway for the Manx Airlines flight to Heathrow – yes, all that long ago but I remember it with searing clarity – and the bright-eyed girl asked if I had any bags to go through.
I held up my small overnight vanity case and told her: ‘This is all I’ve got. No hand luggage.’
The bright eyes clouded over. I should have told her I had nothing to go in the hold. I had got it all back to front yet again.
The cause always seemed to be a sudden crunching of the tectonic plates of the enfeebled mind which made me say or do the opposite of what I intended, like when I went to the village butcher’s shop on errands for my daughter while freeloading at her home in Hampshire. I told the man behind the counter to put the cost on her charge account.
‘It’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘I’m her son.’
He froze, wondering if he was confronting a prematurely-aged circus monstrosity or being offered a subtle joke which he couldn’t quite penetrate. I explained and left the premises.
When I looked back he was at the door watching me go. In his hand, partly concealed behind his back, was a cleaver.
Once, when friends rang to invite me to their London home for a long weekend, I said: ‘That would be marvellous. I can bunk down in the cellar.’
After a moment my host-to-be replied: ‘If you must. But I thought you knew it was the attic we’ve turned into a guest room.’
This situation was later reversed when I rang some people to invite them to the bijou residence for drinks, telling them: ‘I’ve got some decent Champagne in the oven.’
The man at the other end of the line asked carefully: ‘Then what do you keep in the fridge?’
I tried to wing it with a rueful touch of humour, saying: ‘It sounds like I should be putting my head in it.’
There was a heavy pause. ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I mean the oven. Come quick. I need a drink.’
The condition had variations. At a drinks party with high artistic overtones I was on the fringe of a group in animated and fluent discussion of opera. I tried to break in by saying loudly: ‘Of course the best role for a diva is Mimi in Madame Butterfly.’
They all turned and looked at me in silence until one lady said shortly: ‘Mimi is in La Boheme.’
They turned away from me as one and plunged back into their discussion
It was in desperation that in the end I asked a psychiatrist what I should do about what appeared by a rare variation of clinical insanity. I didn’t consult him at his clinic. He was a fellow guest at a holiday hotel in Greece and I brought the matter up while we were having drinks at the bar before dinner.
I should have known that members of the medical profession can be bitterly resentful of this kind of intrusion.
‘What you should do,’ he told me gravely, ‘is have your skull opened by a surgeon and your brain turned round through 180 degrees. That should do it.’
He got off his stool and walked away, snickering with professional satisfaction.
• JOHN Foster reported the following local authority election headline on iomtoday.co.im: ‘Five ousted from Port St Mary Commissioners – chaos at count in German.’
In a spirit of wilful misunderstanding he suggests they should have done it in English.
• MY Manx Radio broadcasting colleague Tim Glover tells of seeing at least one UK national newspaper story saying that April showers were due to end in May.