Where Was I?

It's Thursday afternoon and I'm at my flat sorting through some old maps as part of a general clear out.

In the years between the dawn of the internet and the arrival of satnavs I used to print out reams of one-page maps from Multimap or Google, covering anywhere I needed to be the next day which wasn't already covered by my shelf of street atlases.

I've been hoarding these ever since with the vague idea that they might one day become aids to my appalling memory - I could look back at them in later years and be able to recall those days and places again.

One of the pages catches my eye now as the ink is so smeared and splattered by rain that many of the street names are illegible. I can make out Thornaby Road - a red line running north to south - so I guess I was somewhere in Teeside, a part of the country I very rarely go to. Wherever I was heading for I must have got absolutely drenched on the way. And yet neither of these unusual circumstances are enough to stir even the slightest recollection of that day, however much I stare at the crumpled paper.

Maybe my pile of would-be memories will turn out to provide only another demonstration of my inability to recall anything much about anything much.

I think I'll keep them anyway.