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.

4 comments:

Suzanne Ross Jones said...

Oooh, I forgot to go to work once. So glad it isn't just me. My working patterns aren't regular and it didn't even cross my mind to think I should be somewhere until they phoned at 11am, worried because I'm normally quite reliable.

XX

Jean said...

Suzanne - So you once forgot to go to work, too? Oh, it's a relief to know it's not just me!

Karen said...

I SO know the feeling - I recently got a phone call from a friend asking where I was - I was supposed to be going to the cinema with her and her daughter and had completely forgotten even though I'd written it on my calendar (I forget to look at it!)

I had to remove a song lyric from my novel after being told that publishers hate them because of copyright implications. Tsk.
I don't think that had anything to do with my age though - or maybe it did :o)

Jean said...

I quoted a lot from pop songs in my earlier drafts. I had to spend ages making sure I'd deleted the quotes. I left in some song titles - which I think (hope!) is okay.