Why do we forget things?

We bought our house in 2000. It was much bigger and grander than our previous semi detached in Buckinghamshire; we hadn’t really wanted anything as big, but, having previously lived right by the M40, the peace and quiet of the Cotswolds was enticing.

The house needed gutting, so we didn’t move in immediately; and when we did finally get to deliver our furniture, we found that we could fit most of our worldly possessions into the cupboard under the stairs. In fact, we finally decided that the arm chairs and sofas, much loved, but elderly and of unknown histories, could do with being thrown away… We’d watched friends groping for their inhalers every time they sat in our living room for some years now and perhaps enough was enough.

It’s an interesting place with a few surprises here and there. Although there is a big kitchen, it’s layout is such that there is no room for a conventional fridge, so we have turned the old larder cupboard into a cold room. This means that there is a short walk through the kitchen door into the corridor every time we need the milk or anything else out of the fridge. Just fine, except that there seems to have been some kind of memory-wipe device installed into the door frame of this and other rooms, noticeable, only because every time we get to the fridge, we find we’ve forgotten what we went there for. This same phenomenon occurs with all kinds of short journeys from one room to another, so we are absolutely positive about the existence of the memory-wipe thingie; I do catch myself wondering what it might have been invented for and would love to know if anyone else has a house which might have the same thing? I would be most interested to hear. One suggestion is that it could have been put there to usefully wipe the memories of below stairs staff in Victorian England, who, having just witnessed some appalling indiscretion of Milord’s or Milady’s, had their memories wiped as they walked back through the door to below stairs, thereby reducing salacious gossip in the village.

Well it’s a thought isn’t it?!