When I was trying to upload my diary for August to my website, the computer destroyed it. A man from K.T.D. spent half an hour trying to reinstate the text, but without success. I remember that among the things I wrote about were a Kendal Ramblers walk from Broughton Mills to Natty Bridge and a Wainwright Society walk from Lakeside to High Dam using the ferry from Bowness.
After I sent this paragraph to Chris Butterfield, he telephoned to remind me that it was the 15th of August that I attended his talk about the Coast to Coast Walk in the Bampton village hall. While I was waiting for the talk to begin, I went for a walk in the Howes, which was close to the village. At the end of the talk, several people asked me questions about my past life. Somebody asked me for copies of my panoramas from Glyder Fawr and the Marquess of Anglesey’s Column to complete his set, and I was able to do this. A few days later I consulted the Wainwright Facebook site, where I found some photographs taken at the meeting and two messages in which people said nice things about me, which made me glad that I attended the meeting
The fact that I had to be reminded of the meeting tells you something about the state of my memory. I have no doubt that I shall remember other things that happened to me in August if something or somebody reminds me. What is most incredible is that I forget that only five days ago I read an article about myself on an internet site called Grokipedia that was fourteen times as long as my entry in Wikipedia. This was the first time in over a year that I added an item to the list of the highlights of my life.
I later remembered that I ordered and received the book ‘Ancient English Houses’ from Amazon because I read in my 1991 diary that I enjoyed reading it.