In his Winter Journal, Paul Auster writes, 'Some memories are so strange to you, so unlikely, so outside the realm of the plausible, that you find it difficult to reconcile them with the fact that you are the person who experienced the events you are remembering.' I thought it was just me. This year I have such a succession of experiences that they barely got a chance to become memories before they were squeezed out as another pushed its way in. I'm not saying I live this hugely exciting life but not a month seems to go by without something happening. And travel, despite having a full time job (where I have had nary a sick day in twenty years) and writing and publishing as part of this job, I seem to have squeezed a lot of places in. Edinburgh, London, New York, Austen, Oklahoma, Barcelona, Majorca, Kefalonia, Oxford, Glasgow, Winchester and Cape Town - and in these places I keep working because I have written or co-written around thirty-thousand words for publication this year too (and today I am working on another project, which I am very excited about). Then again, maybe that is just me and my life and this blog is a way of reminding myself of the memories. Perhaps I should be keeping hard copy of this as an aide memoir of sixtieth year. I have friends who don't forget anything and they remind me of memories I was involved in but can't even remember taking place. I wonder why that is, why some people remember everything and some of us remember hardly anything at all? And now I can't remember why I asked that question. I wonder if I am really a goldfish.. I wonder if I am really a goldfish.. I wonder if I am really a goldfish.. I wonder if I am really a goldfish… did I ask that before? It has been a long year… sometimes like traveling down a nowhere road.
