My new series of pieces for Radio Humberside has started and here’s the first of them.
Hello, my name is Neil Pickford and I’m a virger at Beverley Minster.
That information was partly for any new listeners, but I also thought I’d better just quickly remind everyone else who I am because, well, these days everyone’s memory seems to be failing.
I know mine is – it’s either that or my memory is going – or have I just said that?
I went out the other day with a message for my boss and colleague John, only to find that in the 12 paces from our office to where he was I’d completely forgotten what I’d come to say.
It was only when I went back and found the phone off the hook that I remembered there’d been a call for him.
By the time I’d found him again the caller had gone – probably forgotten what they wanted to say.
But that’s not relevant right now.
I’ve noticed that more and more members of the congregation are addressing me as ‘ummm’. It doesn’t upset me because, well, to be quite honest, I have increasing difficulties with facts these days.
I couldn’t remember the vicar’s name the other day. It’s stupid (no, not his name – that’s Jeremy) but it’s stupid how something I use so often just wouldn’t come to me when I was asked a direct question. I must have looked like a fish, mouth opening and closing rapidly. You know the type of fish…. the whatjamacallit.
Another question that floored me recently was: “Where’s the Coltman gravestone?”
Well, I remembered where his memorial tablet was, and his enormous chair, and his date of birth but the location of his gravestone had vanished from my mind as if I’d never known.
(By the way, I remembered later, it’s just outside our south nave door, but that was no help at the time).
I suppose it’s one of the joys of old age – I’ve always remembered facts and, if I’m allowed to recall them in a given sequence then I’m still confident about things but, if you ask me out of the blue for something that you would expect to be nailed into my mind then I am sometimes at a loss. I need to create new links to old memories if my mind is to work properly in future.
This insight really hit me only the other day thanks to an old Mott the Hoople song: All the Way to Memphis. You may remember it – I certainly could because I’d been singing it for a few minutes.
“It took me years to understand the first line” chipped in my wife in conversational mode and I suddenly went blank.
What on earth was it? – jolted off my normal groove I just couldn’t’ drag it out of the depths. (By the way, I can confidently recall that it was “Forgot my six-string razor – hit the sky”.) See, it’s easy if I’m not startled. But at that moment….
Luckily this memory thing doesn’t often affect my work at the Minster because – well – I suppose it’s because my job involves a certain amount of fixed routine, plus an unending array of ever-changing faces, circumstances and demands. This combination of old and new seems the best way to build new links to old memories and keep them fresh.
It’s not perfect, but it seems to work.
Hang on – wait a minute. Was this really what I meant to talk about today?
Actually I can’t remember. If it wasn’t then perhaps it will come flooding back to me in time for next week.
Who knows?
The Pickford Papers 