SOME thoughts this week on the subject of memory.

I recently unearthed a relic from the 1980s: my Rubik's cube.

Actually, it wasn't really a Rubik's cube, but one of the cheap knock-offs that were widely available at the time because the real thing was so expensive.

Anyway, I once knew how to solve the puzzle, and I became increasingly determined to do so once again.

Having long ago lost the book which gave the solution, it was easy enough to find some instructions on the internet. But the hard part was following them. I stayed up long into the night, spending free time I didn't have, obsessed with finishing the infernal thing - which, at long last, I did before falling down exhausted.

Why was I so preoccupied? Partly because, as people discovered in the 1980s, the puzzle is addictive. But more importantly, it was because I once had all this knowledge in my head and could do the thing in a few minutes. And now it was taking me an age.

There are few things so frustrating as the thought that your mind could once memorise easily things that it now struggles to remember at all. And I wasn't aware how early it set in.

Here's another example. I used to be able to retain a whole lot of useless information about the films I'd seen - dates, directors, stars etc. These days, I couldn't easily tell you who directed even some of the movies I've enjoyed in the last couple of years.

Sherlock Holmes used to say that the memory was like an attic, and that after a while you couldn't store anything new in it without throwing out something else. I don't know whether this is scientifically true, but it seems like a good analogy. The trouble is that I don't seem to be the one who chooses what's kept.

For example, I have trouble remembering valuable stuff, like people's birthdays, yet can remember phone numbers and registration plates from years ago which are no longer of any use to me.

And why should it be that I can't remember the third movement of Beethoven's Symphony Number Three, yet Russ Abbot's Oh What an Atmosphere is lodged firmly in my head?

I have two small children, and they are learning things at an alarming rate. My four-year-old will memorise the text of an entire story at one sitting.

I read somewhere that there's a period in which a toddler will be learning eight words a day - which is exactly the rate at which I seem to be forgetting them. So there you have it: my children are leaching my memory capacity from me.

In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they can do the darned Rubik's cube.

First published: Oct 13