Holiday forgetfulness

While writing my recent blog post on holidaying in Nice, I was struck by the transitory nature of experience and the inadequacy of our memories.

It's a common experience to find that, as soon as you're back from holiday, it seems like you've never been away. It's as if all that lovely relaxation, sightseeing, soaking up the sun, or whatever else you've done has just evaporated into thin air. Almost as if it never happened.

Yet I find that I have an additional problem -- actually remembering what I've done while away on holiday. Of course, as soon as you come into work, people ask you how it was, what you did, etc. And I find that I'm struggling to answer these questions because I can't actually remember.

This year I decided to prepare for this eventuality. On holiday, at the end of each day, I wrote down what we had done and the places that we'd visited. This certainly helped, the very act of writing my experiences down somehow better etching them in my mind. Yet, when I came to write my blog post about Nice, I still found myself diving for my copy of the Rough Guide to check that I'd got the details right.

Maybe I'm just getting too old to remember properly. Or maybe my mind is already too full with all the work, family, etc., etc. stuff that I have to carry around with me and remember every day...