Don't worry about forgetting the wee things says Peter, as long as you can find your way home!

I was telling my wife a story the other night. It was about a friend’s dad and how they were starting to get worried about him.
Aah, that's where they were!Aah, that's where they were!
Aah, that's where they were!

As usual my story meandered somewhere else and when I tried to go back to the first story, I could not for the life of me, remember what I had said. For ten minutes I racked my brain trying to remember and then it suddenly hit me “Dementia, his dad has dementia!”

This is not a joke about dementia, I am talking about forgetfulness which is something that gets worse as you get older.

We all go through the same thing most nights when we try to remember an actor's name or what programme they used to be in. Just don’t do what I did and wake up at 4am shouting “Murder!...she wrote..'' and then having my wife say “That’s right, He was murdered in his sleep, wasn’t he? Night night dear”

Being forgetful doesn’t necessarily mean that dementia is on the way.

Last month I removed the tyre dust caps from the car and to ensure I didn’t lose them, or forget where I had stashed them for safety, I put them in my pocket – where they remained for the next fortnight as I hunted for them!

I remembered to put the car in for a service though, which is the main thing. The dust caps didn’t really matter and that tends to be the case with forgetfulness. We remember the big things and chuck away the other stuff. You might forget your postcode but you never drive home thinking “Where on earth do I live?”

I like to think of my brain as a laptop. The only problem is, it’s a 56-year-old laptop!

How many people have computers, TV’s or even washing machines that old? We don’t get an upgrade, we can’t add more memory but we do have a recycle bin and that is where all the trivial things that we don’t really need to remember end up.

So when you are struggling with an actor's name or something fairly similar, what you are actually doing is rummaging in your brain’s recycle bin trying to find it so don’t worry too much about dementia. You're just getting old and you no longer need to remember everything.

Incidentally I am writing this column early on Monday morning because I forgot all about it.

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