Now that we have the right for certain aspects of our past to be officially ' forgotten ', at least in the online world, we might be forgiven for asking ourselves what the point is of remembering anything or wondering how long it may be before we can apply the privilege of deletion to our own cavernous mental repositories. Oh to be able to cleanse those Augean stables of useless retention!
Musing on the mental dexterity of my two year old granddaughter -- and my own hastening retreat to the opposite end of that particular spectrum -- during a recent game of pelmanism, I found myself thinking of a memory test I had seen in the Times a few weeks before.
The purpose of this test was not clear but keen to discover whether I was joining the ranks of the bewildered, as a good friend of mine politely describes those with problems of recall, I tackled the question which required the reader to memorise a sequence of twelve numbers. This I did and turned the page, to discover that I could produce only the first two digits on the list. I slid gracelessly into a slough of despond, exacerbated by the frustration of not knowing whether this was all the result of anno domini or animo dementiae.
Into this picture frame of random mental images stepped the smooth and ample figure of Leslie Welch, the 'Memory Man ' who in the post-war era, when such things counted for something, held audiences spellbound with his encyclopaedic knowledge of all matters sporting and a good deal else besides. As a boy I was fascinated by his generous girth, quite convinced that this concealed a special brain dedicated to the art of instant recall. However, at a relatively early age, Leslie ran out of steam, had to choose between his occupation and his marriage and died a disillusioned and almost forgotten figure. Perhaps a brilliant memory isn't such an asset after all.
Then there are those eternal anniversaries when we are encouraged to remember events of years ago in multiples of ten. Two young princes of the Windsor family now choose to make a big thing about the passing of their mother twenty years ago and quite a section of the populus responds with a cacophony of sensationalist bile. At the other end of the spectrum, bringing the battle of Passchendaele into acute public awareness a hundred years on does seem to have beneficially underlined the horror of war, as well as serving to ease family pain, keenly felt even across several generations. Let us hope that the holocaust that accompanied the Second World War can be kept similarly in even greater horrific and shameful focus.
At a personal level, now embarking on my eighth decade, I find I recall most clearly at each stage of life the taking up of the gauntlet and the laying down of the same: those first few anxious but heady days in a new job, and the celebration, particularly on the part of one's colleagues, on departure -- a sandwich of richly tasteful bread enveloping a bland and meagre filling. Early childhood is a series of images of ingesting liquids and solids of dubious value and certainly no appeal, while watching adults ensuring good health with fruits forbidden to mere children. So I can still taste Gripe Water and Grape Nuts, Virol and Milk of Magnesia, with my dear mother surrounded by Eno's Fruit Salts, Sanatogen and Rennies -- and a remarkably long and healthy life she enjoyed too.
How about the use of memory to foster affection? There was Frank Ifield with his yodelling falsetto rendering of I Remember You, while at the other end of the register a drowsy, basso profundo Nat King Cole told anyone listening that they are Unforgettable. Hilaire Belloc in Tarantella inquires ' Do you remember an inn, Miranda ? ', a delightfully and reassuringly uncomplicated poem, I always thought, until much later in life someone told me it was about young Spanish soldiers queuing up in a Pyrenean brothel. How naïve of me not to have read more into ' the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers under the vine of the dark verandah ' just after the mention of straw for bedding.
Of course memory can be employed as a none too subtle way of asserting authority, gaining credibility through having been there, and Shakespearean characters are simply the best at this. On St Crispin's Day before Agincourt a young King Henry tells the assembled army ' Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember, with advantages, what feats he did that day. ' And Mark Antony, over the bleeding body of Julius Caesar: ' If you have tears prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember the first time Caesar ever put it on. 'Twas on a summer's evening .... ' At a stroke the defiant king and the loyal general have right on their side.
Meanwhile it's back to the anniversaries and who could forget the ferocity of the English ' hurricane ', especially if you were living in Sevenoaks, thirty years ago? The consequence of the failure of the forecasters to advise us in advance of this event has led to their determination ever since to err on the side of warning us of the bleakest of doom laden scenarios. Every day we are informed of an impending typhoon in Teignmouth or a tsunami in Thorpeness, presumably on the basis that, if the horror eventuates, the prophets can proudly claim ' We told you so ' and if nothing materialises, we are all jolly grateful in any case.
We are certainly extremely confused currently over releasing the British hold on India seventy years ago: should we be celebrating independence, bemoaning partition or be just a little ashamed over the whole business of ' Empire ' anyway? However, we can take much greater pride and possibly pleasure in remembering the ' Summer of Love ' fifty years ago although I never could quite get round to complying with ' Be sure to wear the flowers in your hair '. More significantly, love of a different sort was allowed to express itself with the decriminalisation or legalisation [ take your pick ] of homosexuality, a move which has had a profoundly healthy and positive effect on British society. And in the same way that Henman will always be remembered for his Hill at Wimbledon and Obama for his Care Programme [ whatever happens to it now ], so Alan Turing will be remembered and respected not so much for his matchless work on the development of information technology as for the legislation, linked much later to his name
There once was a man by name Turing,
Park Bletchley he found quite alluring;
He conquered Enigma
But not the queer stigma,
Yet now his own law is enduring.
Finally there is the business of remembering specific historic events. ' Remember, remember the 5th of November ', we used to chant as we dealt unceremoniously with Guy Fawkes and through him, somewhat unreasonably, the whole Roman Catholic religion. But lest we forget -- and we have a habit of making ourselves rather adept at that -- what about remembering the disasters of the past sixty years which have happened due to the action or inaction of ourselves, the great British society, supposedly one of the most advanced and civilised in the world? 144 died at Aberfan in 1966; 96 at Hillsborough in 1989; and now at least 80 in the Grenfell Tower. After each of these there are smokescreens as those responsible run for cover, while worthy officials and politicians make reassuring noises about things never happening again. And of course they won't in each particular context but warning lights and wake up calls are not, it seems, transferred to those with responsibilities in different areas and we are left wondering where the next shameful disaster will strike. I still have a letter, written by Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the mid 1970s in reply to a letter in which I suggested that a car ferry was an ideal target for a terrorist with an explosive device. I wonder if a similar letter today would prompt an equally unsatisfactory response. I think I will join Marlene Dietrich and sing along to ' Wann wird man je verstehn? '.
There are of course happy memories and these are important too, not least in moments of trouble and sadness -- and there will be uplift on another day -- but I close now, somewhat lugubriously -- with the thought that 2017 marks the tercentenary of the composition of Handel's Water Music and as I listen to the Hornpipe while writing this, I wonder if humankind has advanced one iota in the things that matter over the past three hundred years.
16th August 2017
