Was just chatting to my wife about shoes for the kids and the differences between pumps/plimsolls (we decided they were the same thing, man we have all the funs) and the conversation moved to what shoes we had as kids.

Now for some reason, i have a void in my memory of all things shoe related pre 14 years old. Nothing.

Just struck me as odd. Some shoe related event that was too harrowing to remember? Goodness knows.

Any unexplained voids from your memory?

I can’t remember.

The end of several Friday/Saturday nights out.

Anything my wife has asked me to do in the last month.

Late 80’s – late 90’s.

Probably best left unsolved….

What I left the office and walked down the corridor to do.

Clarks Pathfinders

It had something to do with a probe and a bright light,can’t remember which order.

Old school friends and teachers names, I can only remember a handful – it was 35 years ago though and I hated school so I’ve probably shut it out!

My wife can reel off loads of her old friend and teachers though.

Louise.

Sniffing a handkerchief.

Won’t be trying that again. Made my arse hurt.

Booze related voids I get, took me a while to work out vodka seemed to stop me forming any new memories. Hmm, maybe it is just me getting older and my brain needing the space.

Brain: Crap, where am I going to stick all these new wheel sizes. Hmmm, oh here, on this shoe shelf, nice one brain, you did it again. Oh crap, we’ve gone to work with no trousers on, ah lets just see how it pans out.

Massive bits of the 90’s

Thankfully there were no camera phones in those days, so I’m unlikely to ever be forced into remembering it either.

i remember an advert for shoes on the tele, clarks magic shoes i think?  there was a bunch of kids on a magical adventure, a witch and a golden key.. id have been about 7. that is all i have about shoes.

Why I’m in this room.

Half the people I work withs names.

Most of the street names in the town I’ve lived in for 45 years.

My children’s dates of birth ( I can actually guess them with 90% certainty).

Funnily enough OP just the other day I remembered a pair of trainers from my youth that I don’t think I’ve ever thought about since the time they were around, totally came out of the blue. A pair of Pony NFL jobs that were super cool at the time, about when channel 4  started showing American football on TV.

Everything before walking into a meeting about the new forum.

I heard a theory that the memory capacity of the brain is essentially infinite. Anything you’ve seen, heard, smelt, it’s all in there. It’s just that the filing system is the equivalent of a warehouse full of filing cabinets*, and when you get a new memory you just open up every single drawer of every cabinet and then hurl the pages of your memory into the warehouse. With your eyes shut.  Where it lands, who knows?

So your memory isn’t full, it’s just that your indexing system ‘needs work’. But that’s also why for example occasionally you smell something and instantly you get a memory floods back, because that’s triggered the index. Same as someone saying Clark’s Pathfinders – which I’d never have found on my own – and you go ‘Oh Yes!’

* there is a separate locked room in the warehouse for storing the last hour of most Saturday nights in my late teens and early twenties. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not……

The happy bits.

apparently it’s where my wife stuffs all my things*

*not a euphemism

All those nights Uncle Jack came over to stay

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I remember cycling along. And I can remember waking up looking at the sky and a circle of faces.

I can understand why I don’t remember the unconscious bit, but I don’t understand why I’m also missing the bit as the accident started. It’s not like I was unconscious which caused the accident. Is it like when Word crashes it only recovers the last autosave? Is it possible to change a brain’s autosave settings?

Did you ever have to help your Uncle Jack off a horse?

1989

Not sure if this is “inexplicable” but…

Most of July 1996 to July 2000 when I was in a terrible state with booze and drugs. If I played all my memories of those years in a continuous stream it wouldn’t last more than an hour or so at a guess.

July 2009 to Oct 2009 when I was off my dial on prescription drugs this time, lots and lots of Tramadol, which only came to an end when my GP questioned why I’d ‘lost’ my painkillers twice and needed more.

How to ride a motorbike, I completed a DAS course and passed my test(s) with flying colours in 2009 (which was unrelated to my need for massive doses of painkillers before anyone assumes) I rode a bike for about a year on/off, I was never Rossi, but I could pottle about in control and was told by my instructor, the test bloke and my biker mates I was very smooth, but I haven’t so much as sat on a bike since 2011 and whilst I remember where all the controls are, I can’t remember how the gearbox on a bike works for certain (bottom up it’s 1, N, 2, 3 I think and I don’t remember how many gears my bike had) and I’m almost certain I couldn’t pull away without stalling.

How to index a derailuer, used to be good at it, now I need a friend to help.

How that blood stained meat cleaver got in my hands and who is this dismembered body in my kitchen?

#notagain

I had a seizure on Friday 21st October 2016, so anything from 1984 up to the day of the seizure is gone. According to my neurologist, I’ve had a “factory reset”, back to a time when my life was a happy place. It’s terrible having 32 years of my life missing.

Funny how amnesia affected a lot of people in the 90s!! 😊 There were quite a few times when I woke up not remembering what had happened the night before or even where I was and sometimes even who I was! 😳

Also in the noughties I lost a complete hour of memory after crashing and knocking myself unconscious whilst mtbing in Epping Forrest somewhere. Luckily I was found by two nice old ladies who called the ambulance. I can remember leaving my flat in London but after that it’s a complete blank until I woke up with an oxygen mask over my face and several people standing over me.

Has anyone ever tried to improve their memory or worked out a method of helping? Joking aside it is a bit of a worey sometimes (when I remember). Admittedly it is better than it was, when the kids were born/younger and working shifts there was a time that a full night’s sleep seemed like something other people did. My memory was really really bad, I lived with little paper lists in my pocket.

Why I opened this thread.

Hmm………..?…nope….it’s gone

Has anyone ever tried to improve their memory or worked out a method of helping?

Like i said, it’s not the memory that’s the issue, it’s the indexing. And yes there are ways of remembering stuff, that involve for example creating a narrative.

I too am worried about my memory (my grandfather had quite early onset Alzheimers) so i try to keep it agile by doing puzzles and sudoku, etc., but on memory specifically I try to create mental lists (but my wife forces me to write them down too when she sends me to the shops) and I try to use imagery and narratives.

FOR EXAMPLE

you know this Barclay’s advert –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DS8-TC-Qu8

I set myself a task to remember them. So the second part, blue beetle, orange key is easy cos a beetles a car you unlock with an orange key.

But blue shoes / red ball / green rabbit…..?

Well…. Stuart Broad used to have these bright blue bowling boots, and of course the ball would be red, and I can picture a green rabbit batting at the other end. Doesn’t particularly have to make sense, just stick in the mind.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/15/story-lines-facts

I had a seizure on Friday 21st October 2016, so anything from 1984 up to the day of the seizure is gone. According to my neurologist, I’ve had a “factory reset”, back to a time when my life was a happy place. It’s terrible having 32 years of my life missing.

Crumbs!! And i was miffed i couldn’t remember shoes.

Face planted into some rocks after a bad landing from a drop at Stainburn, realising I needed to get back to my car sharpish I went to set off, but couldn’t remember where to go. Eventually decided to set off and can’t remember anything from that point on until I got back to my car about 10 minutes later (I think) apart from a very small bit where I remember looking at a bunch of trees and thinking I should either be going towards them or away from them, can’t remember which but I do remember thinking something about the trees!! All very weird.

I didn’t drive home BTW. My wife came to get me, which was a farce as I couldn’t remember the unlock code for my phone either…..

Although none of that is inexplicable either!!

Early 90’s are very much a blur! The last blur being when I woke one morning excited about an event I thought I was going to that day, only for it to slowly dawn on me that is already been and couldn’t remember jack. That was my turning point.

Things have been clearer since, but my memory is still carp. I just can’t seem to take things in and get them to stay very well anymore 🙁

I can’t remember most of my semi-pro cycling days, the only bits I remember racing were the skanky tuna sandwiches and bruised bananas and tin foil. I can remember a lot of the training routes I used to do across Shropshire though, but then it was just me or me and a mate..

Sailing, we had a Chinese Gybe incident where I lost my top row of teeth and a broken jaw.. I remember the start of the race, I don’t remember the incident, I do remember being dragged out of the water but then it all goes blank for about 2-3 months whilst surgery was performed.. then I have a vivid memory of being taken to a restaurant and trying to bite into lasagna and chips.. blimey 🤬🤬🤬 all I’d eaten for the previous months was soup.

I can remember the late 90’s 🤩🤣🤣🤣

40 minutes every day according to some ‘experts’ on chronostasis.

Visual Illusion: Chronostasis and Saccadic Masking

Legionnaire’s desease nearly did for me in France about 10 years ago.  All I can remember about the 2-3 weeks or so was the bits that didn’t actually happen.  The going to alternative realities and trying to save mankind. You know, that kind of stuff.  I also rang my then boss and accepted the position of worldwide sales manager which didn’t exist and told her to f off when she told me apparently.

My wife thought i was  suffering from a touch of heat stroke and allowed me to drive to Cherbourg from Bordeaux.  I reversed into the same  lampost twice and almost pulled into the motorway the wrong way.  I remember none of this.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>.Possibly not unexplained but still bloody weird.</span>