In many respects, I am a forgetful person. I am particularly bad when it comes to things-you’re-not-supposed-to-talk-about. In the presence of emotionally charged friends and family, I’ve found that taboo subjects rise to my lips like bubbles in a soda glass, and are often popped only just in time.
But I’m good with anniversaries. I mean really good. I plan for them weeks, sometimes months in advance. I can recall the specifics of the day we’re remembering and tailor the anniversary to suit. Emily and I went to the movies on the day we met and this was something we used to do every May bank holiday, although these days we’re more likely to rent a DVD. For a while, we would celebrate the day we met (5th May) and the day we became engaged (5th November, six months later) until she said this was overkill. Now we mark the day, but no longer send cards. An exception is made our wedding anniversary, which is still fussed over appropriately, regardless of how we actually celebrate it.
My sense of recall is very much long-sighted. I can’t remember dentist appointments or things I was supposed to do in town that afternoon. If Emily sends me to the supermarket I can use a list but can never remember if we usually buy salted or unsalted butter, or whether the soy sauce should be dark or light. If there is a day I need to book as annual leave, she has to remind me at least three times. The only way I can prep for the school run is from a printed list that I have to go over again and again, and when leaving the house I can never remember if I’ve locked the door, to the extent that I’ll frequently hang a U at the end of the road so that I can come back and check. I am hopeless. On the other hand I can remember exact conversations from over a decade ago, along with what song was playing and what the other person was wearing. Without having to look it up, I know that we saw Moonwalker in the summer of 1989 and not in 1988, as my mother insists. I can recollect chalet numbers from holidays we took before I hit puberty. Like Rob Fleming / Gordon in High Fidelity I have tinkered with ordering my album collection autobiographically, and I can recall where I was when we bought childhood toys and books I gave away long ago. My inner geek knows no bounds, and Emily has, over the years, come to accept that I’m better at this than she is.
My ability to remember on what day certain things happened – and how they happened – is a handy one, but sometimes even I make mistakes. It was last Friday evening, and although I can no longer remember why, everything was going wrong. We had reached the end of a long, hard week: tempers were frayed, children were tired, adults on the verge of tears. I can’t remember if it was just me who was upset, or whether Emily was mirroring my emotional state, but at a given point she disappeared from the house announcing “Going to the shops”.
I resumed washing up. Five minutes later she was back, standing at the kitchen door, carrying a large gift bag. I opened it: inside, a bottle of red wine and a large box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray. She was smiling.
“For our special day,” she said.
Emily tells me that my face at this point was a mixture of surprised pleasure and utter bewilderment: a rabbit trapped in headlights that don’t come from a car but from an enormous golf buggy driven by other rabbits. I looked from her to the bag and back again and tried to steal a glance at the wall calendar.
“23rd November?” I stammered, after a moment, frantically trying to recall what had obviously slipped my mind.
“Yes,” came the reply. “The day you will always remember as the day you nearly suffered a heart attack because you thought you’d forgotten an anniversary.”
Evil. Lovely gesture, but evil.
Stuff I had to put somewhere 