Friday 21 May 2010

Documentary

The sound of my recorded voice always catapults me up the cringe factor scale. Hearing myself on the BBC4 documentary 'Mental: A History of the Madhouse' was no exception. However, I'm pleased that the programme makers took a sobering look at the dark side of the history of psychiatry. What went on in those places needs to come out in the open. And, as I once read somewhere: 'Once you know, you can't unknow.'

By the way, if anyone who's interested missed it, BBC4 are repeating it on Tuesday 25th May at 11.30pm.

Friday 7 May 2010

Memory

Well, I suppose it is inevitable that the memory cells of women of a certain age will sometimes clock off and go to bed.

Last week I was happily browsing facebook when I suddenly looked at the clock and thought, 'Erm, shouldn't I be somewhere at this time today? Work!' To be fair, I do work irregular days and hours, doing different shifts to cover for staff leave. But, forgetting to go to work! Oh dear, that's a new one even for me. I had to get off my backside and rush off out, to arrive late at work, full of apologies, with some feeble (though true) excuse of forgetting what shift I was on.

Yesterday I was half-way to a group meeting at a health centre where I was booked to do a talk/reading when I realised I'd forgotten to bring the book I was supposed to be reading from ('The Dark Threads', of course). I had to rush back home to get it.

And now, after reading a really scary article by Blake Morrison in The Guardian about writers quoting from pop songs - click here to see it - I'm frantically looking through my book to check that I remembered to take out before publication all the lines from songs I'd quoted. If I've forgotten to remove some of them, it's too late now. Fortunately I haven't come across any forgotten ones so far - I realised in time that I needed to remove them, though I hadn't realised quite how steep the price of leaving them in would have been.