backwards and forwards (with Anniemay)

My friend and band-mate Neil - highly regarded locally for his fancy fretwork - is also an internationally respected Professor at the University of Cambridge.  So sometimes we talk about things other than music.  He’s been telling me recently about the concept of backwards and forwards memory; backwards memory is about things we’ve already done and forwards memory is about things we have yet to do.  

As we get older, it seems our backwards memory improves and our forwards memory becomes rubbish.  He gives me an example; he’s 18 years old and singing in a pub in Cumbria.  He knows the songs he sang and the people he played with.  He can see himself there.

Yesterday, he had a Zoom meeting scheduled for 11.00am.  He’d forgotten a previous meeting, so set an alarm for this one.  When the alarm went off, he couldn’t remember why he’d set it.

I recognise this in myself.  Before I sat down to write this, I went into town to shop for tea.  (Northern tea). When I got back I found that I’d forgotten some of what I’d gone for.  (Yes I had a list, but forgot to look at it).  And I’m not the only one in this house who struggles with forwards memory (sometimes).  

If forwards memory can be a bit of a problem, recent memory’s not too clever either.  Which brings me to Blip.  

My recent past has been curated by Blip.  And athough the numbers suggest 7 years, I actually started 8 years ago, in March 2014. If I want to know where we’ve been or who we’ve seen, Blip will provide the answer.  Even if I have forgotten.

Blip is a time machine - it takes us backwards and forwards.  My first blip was a photo of Anniemay.  It seems appropriate to picture her for this one - lost in the present, but surrounded by her own past. 

I wouldn’t have got this far without her.