One for the Road: Fried…

I was swinging an electrified tennis racket about the kitchen the other day, feeling like a cross between Roger Federer and Percy from ‘The Green Mile’, when, not for the first time, I started to worry that my memory was slipping.

‘There definitely wasn’t as many flies and wasps about last year,’ I grunted, as my weapon sliced through the air and connected with another of my many tormentors, sending a few sizzling volts through his body and leaving him spinning like a breakdancer on the tiles.

I looked down as he spun – presumably propelled by the last dying flutters of his frazzled wings – until he finally stopped.

‘Do I actually have any idea of how many bugs were about last summer? Come to think of it, do I have any distinct memories of last summer at all?’

I tried to summon some specific scenes, but only a haze of summers past came to mind – faint, fuzzy, generic, possibly confabulated.

‘I dunno where I’m pulling these out of but I definitely don’t think it’s my hippocampus.’

That glitch – the fact I could stare back at a full summer and see nothing – was the start of it.

My memory these days is terrible, at least compared to how sharp it was only a few years ago.

At least I think it used to be pretty good… But maybe I’m misremembering.

I’m awful with names, numbers and the titles of films, but better when it comes to faces, non-numerical facts and story lines.

In other words: I can’t recommend a movie but I can still spoil the ending.

As a secret worrier, someone who has learned to manage but not master their anxious nature, I am occasionally seized by the strong sense that, yes, as my long suppressed suspicion goes, my faltering recall is an incipient symptom of some degenerative brain disease, which will surely rob me of my faculties before I’m 40.

It might be that I can’t mind a capital city, the lyrics of a favourite song, the name of a fella I went to school with, or whether or not I locked the door or turned off the immersion.

But whatever the catalyst, it’s too often followed by me doing what I know I shouldn’t: Googling ‘Just how early can you get early onset dementia?’

This has happened a couple of times now, and the first few paragraphs I come across, usually from the NHS or some other annoyingly trustworthy source, tend to tell me that I’ll be grand.

So, of course, hellbent on scaring the life out of myself, I dismiss those wholesale.

But about five panicky minutes of scrolling later, I’ve found just what I’m looking for: Some rare case to confirm my fears and provide me with fuel I need for an all-night freak-out.

Though the main worry is my waning memory and unravelling mind, I usually don’t stop there, making sure, like a child saying their bedtime prayers, to include everybody I love – except instead of praying that they’ll live forever, I convince myself that most of them are probably going to die in the next few months.

Thankfully though, when the morning comes, with some holistic alchemy of sleep, daylight, reassurance and rational thinking, the sense of impending doom that plagued me through the night has passed and the all-encompassing dread is gone.

At that point, I go back to believing that my unreliable recall isn’t the premature detonation of some genetic time bomb, but simply the result of age, boxing and three years of libertine-living in Belfast.

It’s not illness, I reassure myself, but lifestyle – maybe even just life.

And likewise, I become much more optimistic about everyone else’s chances of seeing 2026, too.

But worries are like the flies; it doesn’t matter how many times you think you’ve got rid of them, they’ll always be back.

Next time, though, I’m not reaching for Google like it’s some kind of psychological insect zapper.

Because the only thing that gets fried when it comes out is my head.