It's All Still in the Mind.

    Five of the family met up together recently. Its fairly unusual for us to be all in one place, sitting still and talking together. What sad lives we lead at times. Plus we are all getting older. The time will come when we will be saying simply 'I wish.....'

    I've always had strong views on aspects of life; being orphaned young and thereby being 'my own man' accounts for a lot. On religion 'I know nowt'. What I do believe is that the human brain is the cleverest 'computer' ever. I believe that the brain can and does store EVERYTHING we have ever experienced. It is always there in our brains and can be recalled, how I'm not sure, right up to our end. We have no control over this in the same way that we have no real control over our living and breathing. ( Obviously things like demensia affects the equation for some of us). But when that old ticker stops that's it; what happens then to our memories, you tell me.

    This musing, these 'What's it all about. Alfie' moments came to mind when I remembered, several hours later what had been mentioned/ discussed at a family get-together. No order, no pattern, things/events/happenings fleetingly recalled and then gone again. If you think you are in control of anything in this life, you must be joking.

 Uncontrolled recall, in no order at this gathering.

    Travelling eighty miles to Grimsby as a salesman to sell a kitchen and they were out. Introduction to Grimsby, two female police officers jump on a man for drinking in the street. Bridlington, a friend moves to Bridlington. Why would anyone WANT to live in Bridlington by choice. School lesson plans, first teaching wage, was it £27 a week. Why should school and teaching be recalled. I invite an ex pupil back to school; he returns driving a large circus lorry and trailer. I 'manage' an aging aunts lock up garages. A caravan turns up on the yard with occupant but NO vehicle. In one garage is no vehicle but around a dozen hens. I can remember the days when it wasn't unusual in the village to have hens behind wire netting under the kitchen table.One garage is used for prostitution. (A pimp watches from another garage, unobserved; I find a man's empty wallet, a slip of paper informs he is from from Burton. He has been robbed, an expensive transaction.)

    My wife and I take a mattress as a gift to an old couple. The man comes to the door minus trousers or pants. Under the kitchen table is a dead dog. Concerned I visit the council offices. I am told to mind my own business, it is their 'right' to live as they see fit. In the garages are gas meters that are fitted prior to the meter readers call and returned after his visit. I meet a man on Allenton Market. He specialises in machines that slow down a meter (to do with magnets). I like him but one Sunday afternoon he murders his brother in law after a drinking session. My brother in law working for the Post Office has to set up elaborate wire taps for the police but is not allowed to know why. I remember a family who ran a family business supplying fire lighting sticks for the public. Their electricity supply was courtesy of the local street light. I remember being shown how to feed a coin through a fruit machine continuously by using a coin on a length of wire. I remember living in a changing room of a youth club I ran. Eventually I got decent 'digs' then I married my landladies grand daughter. My grandmothers funeral was like a scene out of a Dickens story. Snow howled down; It seemed a shame for the oldest of the mourners to go home. 

    Enough is enough. It all reminds me of David Bowie and 'Ground Control to Major Tom'.None of this blog is in any order, neither is it 'doctored for effect. It is not meant to be and that is the point. All I am trying to show is a fraction of what is stored in a brain, a tiny fraction overall; in this case recalled in a two hour period.

    I can see how events trigger off memories. Some/most of these events long forgotten. I can see all the events were real, not made up. Beyond that I understand/know little. I will come back to this 'theme' again but not yet.I assume I am reasonably normal in all this, of any case, what is normal. Whoops, here we go again! Any comments gratefully received. Of any case I can't do too much about it all, so I'm off, in the pouring rain, to see Derby County. Now that ain't normal!