General Chat

I have always had a very good memory, however, over the last few years I have noticed that I am not quite so quick and can't always recall things like I used to.

I met a couple whilst on holiday last year, both were doctors. One night we got round to talking about memory loss, nothing serious just everyday forgetfulness. He asked me what I did for a living and I said I had retired two years previously. He said its not uncommon to become forgetful, If you have been in job where your have been used to storing lots of informations in your head, it's just your brain beginning to relax. and letting go of the information.

He gave us little test just for fun, One was to count backwards from seventy down to zero, without stopping to think about it, I am not sure what it proves, but I still do it from time to time.

He also gave us some more brain exercises, but I have forgotten them.

I now speak to thingy and regularly lose the thingumyjig....... :-D

Ann, remembering the name of the PM has the opposite effect on me ;-)

I think that's it Elizabeth if you go away from the puzzle, whatever it may be, and go back to it later the answer usually comes to you .

How I empathise with the groping unsuccessfully for names of people and places, I have these blackouts for people and houses in the village where we've lived for forty years. A more trivial but very annoying side-effect is when doing crosswords, when I know I just know the correct word bit it's in a cloud somewhere (sometimes can get it by coming back later!)

lying in the bed the other night I realised I couldn't remember the name of the prime minister - I thought, gawd 'elp - this is it :-( then I remembered and relaxed a bit :-D

It's true though that the brain does need exercise and tv does not always ( often) provide that... that's why I come here, so my little grey cells can be stimulated by the opinions of those more erudite than myself :-)

"People who can remember any amount of fluff might do ok on quiz night but otherwise are rarely tall poppies." LOL well that's cut me down to size ;-)

But seriously ;-) it's not that I need to remember trivia, it's just that I note a change in how well I can do so, with names and phone numbers in particular. I am however quite good at visualising where I last saw something and mentally following my footprints to find things.

The sense of smell is always a powerful trigger to memory isn't it?

The brain is not wired up to remember text information but rather images and spatial data. Thus efforts to remember such stuff will fail which is one reason why people tend to do badly in exams.

The brain can create new synapses at a brisk rate until the end of your days without running out of room. Like anything else though the brain thrives on exercise which is why playing bridge, coloring books, playing musical instruments, soduku for instance are good and 4 hrs a night of telly is not.

Instead go with the flow and associate stuff you want to remember with an image, a smell, a place, an event - it does not need to have any direct resonance with what you are trying to remember. It is an old trick going back to ancient China but it works. Don't bother with stuff you will never need to know on a regular basis.

People who can remember any amount of fluff might do ok on quiz night but otherwise are rarely tall poppies.

All sounding very familiar, I used to get frustrated
but these days pass it on to OH for him to work out

The only problem with that is if he doesn't know what I'm
talking about, which is often. :-D

Vera, that is often the way that you remember in the middle of the night :-) a notebook by the bed is an essential lol.

So along those lines... . wotsisface, thingummyjig, doodah, doobury, thingummybob, whatchamacallit, oh you know him that was in....and many more :-)

It is quite scary Sue :-(

+++DetEcTive+++ trouble is I fear the book s are falling off the one end faster than they are going on at the other lol .

But then on the plus side I suppose I remember a lot of the distant past very clearly, as I mentioned to mum's friend yesterday remembering walking with her when I was about 4 and her losing a shoe, near to where the metal pig stye was down a particular road.

Guinevere, yes Gary Sinise :-) I did get it when Dan gave me the G and S as my 'starter for ten' ;-)

Frustrating isn't it. I was talking recently to a cousin about places open to the public and said that if she had the chance she should visit....well, it's in Northumberland and begins with G. OH knew exactly where I meant as we have been there twice but he couldn't remember the name either.

Middle of the night, not thinking about it, the name came into my head.. Cragside (well, it has a G in the middle of the word). OH wasn't very pleased when I woke him to tell him but as I pointed out I might have forgotten again by morning :-D

Rose, we probably call IDS what you call him, but had to moderate my language :-D

As for Universal Credit - no, it wasn't referred to as 'Thingy', :-)

Isn't Google wonderful?

We used to have a stack of music, TV and film reference books just to answer that sort of question, now answers are at our fingertips.

Gary Sinese, btw.

Google answers that eternal question, "What else has he/she been in?"

Look on your memory as an open-ended bookshelf. As you put a new book on one end, another falls off the other. ;-)

Him and me were greeted in the street yesterday. After she'd gone, OH said she looked familiar & asked who she was. I said she worked at X. He then remembered her name, something I couldn't!

My friend who has just had her birthday is exactly one month older than me phoned me on Friday.

We discussed the problem of recall and both of us have found difficulty with people's names also places.

It's quite scary :-(

"Iain Duncan Wotsisface" is kinder than what I call him ;-)

My sister and I have telephone discussions like this all the time. :-D
We were discussing an aspect of Universal Credit tonight - and neither of us could remember what it was called. In the end, though we couldn't name it , we knew what we meant by the phrase - That expensive thingy that doesn't quite work, brought in by Iain Duncan Wotsisface :-D :-D

you've always had a great memory for names and it seems to be drifting away from you? :-(

In the grand scheme of things it doesn't 'matter' that I sat for an hour trying to recall the name of the actor who plays Mac Taylor in CSI NY, and that I knew he was in 'Of Mice & Men' and 'Forrest Gump' and does a lot of work for charity..... but so frustrating that it was only when I asked son to google and only '"give me his initials", that I remembered :-(