Powers of recall

I had [what I considered to be] a great idea for a blog post at about 8am this morning and an hour later* I cannot remember what it was. This is so frustrating, but symptomatic of a wider issue that most commonly expresses itself with me walking upstairs or downstairs to do something and upon arrival having no idea what it was. I am hoping by typing this that it will all of a sudden come back to me, a bit like when you forget a person's name and intensely trying to recall it has precisely zero effect, but then a little while later you are doing something completely different and all of sudden shout out "John Mensah!". That's a recent example - we had been talking about race whilst having dinner and of our experiences growing up in almost completely white caucasian schools in areas far less diverse (at least back then, and probably still) than where we live now . There was a girl called Michelle whose last name I remembered instantly and as a result have been able to discover is now a psychologist in London, but the only other black kid I could remember was John and for the life of me I just could not dredge up his last name. I could picture him perfectly, hear his voice almost - bear in mind this is over 30 years ago - but all that came to me was John. I tried all the usual tricks like going through the alphabet and trying out sounds, but it wasn't until a few days later that I suddenly and completely tangentially announced to the family that I thought his surname might have started with M, at which point my son offered up a few ideas, one of which was Mensah and which is apparently a very common Ghanaian name. I could not have said that was his heritage, when you're a kid that kind of thing isn't important, he was just John, just as Michelle was simply Michelle. 

Anyway, one paragraph in I am still none the wiser, and so instead of a zinging post that tapped directly into the zeitgeist instead there is this. It wasn't about birds, that much I know, as I briefly questioned whether it was OK to follow my last post about drinking with another one also completely devoid of birdy content. I decided I didn't care, went and had a shower, and appear to have washed my amazing idea down the plug hole. It will no doubt come to me when I am least expecting it, so watch this space. 

In other news I have no other news. I've not been outside since Saturday except to take the recycling out. I've seen nothing and met nobody. Welcome to the next few weeks. This is why good ideas are so important. Bummer.

* I actually wrote this this morning actually but set it up to auto-publish this evening at half past six, which is what I always do when writing stuff in advance. And no, I still can't remember....