Memory

Back staying with my mum, I took the opportunity to go through some old bits and pieces of mine in her garage, stored away in a sideboard I once owned. I'd not set eyes upon this stuff in well over 30 years. There wasn't a huge amount. I must have curated my memorabilia at some point. It's meant, at least, that I've only left myself with quality junk. All the actual rubbish must have been thrown away.

I didn't feel ready to go through it in any detail. It was enough to know that I seem to have in my possession every letter that's ever been written to me, from the days when letter writing was the only way of keeping in touch with friends from college. There were a few things from the even deeper past. I picked out a handful of gems to take home with me, thinking that each might make for an interesting story to record here on a quiet news day.

Shown here are a couple of pages from a cricket scorebook from the time I used to play for Brockenhurst in Hampshire. It's memorable for me as the only time I ever got a five-for, as an unfashionable leg-spinner in days long before the arrival of Shane Warne. Looking at the details, I was confronted by the unreliability of my memory. I've been spreading fake news!

After losing both our opening batsmen for ducks we decided that a win was out of the question and we hunkered down for a draw. It was an astonishing rearguard action to bat out all of 48 overs. We finished on 27 for 8. Over the years, in the telling of the story of this match to my sons, I got my part wrong. I remembered correctly that I'd scored 4 myself. I remembered correctly an innings of 4 made in an hour and 45 mins. I'd conflated the two and claimed the match-saving one as my own - although, in fairness, I didn't do so bad. I can recall playing out maiden after maiden from the spinner, with every fielder around the bat. Except that rather than being left undefeated, I was cleaned up by the demon Mirza, returning for a second spell of lightning-quick bowling. That's how the story will be told now. He was a rough young blacksmith from the New Forest, bowling with real hostility, the ball flying around my head. No helmets then, of course.

As the years pass and we forget the details of events, we are forced to reconstruct a new version from what's left, not even knowing that we are doing so. We fabricate an alternative truth of what happened. Our truth is the truth - until we are confronted with evidence to prove it's not. Mostly that evidence is never available so our personal truth is the only truth. Can there be any other truth in those circumstances? It's something I find myself thinking about a lot these days!