Failing to remember

I must tell you what I did on Monday.

After my lunches, I decided to take a stroll around the city.  I thought it would be useful to take my boots to the cobbler to get the soles replaced before the winter. I thought it would be helpful if I dropped my partner’s watch into the jewellers, for them to replace the battery.  I also thought I would stop off for a coffee and a piece of cake on my way back, so I told my partner my plans, and my partner nodded and said, “OK”. 

Lately, I have been forgetting parts of the English language.  Mostly I have been forgetting nouns and some of the lesser used verbs and this is down to lack of usage.  So what I literally said to my partner was that I was taking my “foot coverings” and his “wrist clock” to “make working properly”.  Luckily, he seemed to understand the gist of what I was saying, so I set off and went into the day.

Monday was beautiful.

It looked grey and damp from inside, but outside the weather was mild and the air was fresh and invigorating after the night’s rain.  The colours of the leaves seemed even more striking against the contrast of the silver sky, and I thoroughly enjoyed my walk around town.

About half-way up Grafton Street it suddenly dawned on me that everything was closed. All of the shops, including the cobblers and the jewellers and the coffee shops and the cake shops, were closed.  There’s a pandemic and we’ve been living with restrictions for 35 weeks, and all the people are inside, and all the shops are closed. 

I had forgotten. 

I had simply forgotten. 

I had slipped into Plato’s allegory of the cave where the shadows on the wall of my reality were open shops and business as usual. In my parallel universe people could pop into shops to speak with the crafts people therein and stop for sugary snacks on the way home. 

What on earth was I thinking?

When I returned home, I said to my partner, “everything is closed due to the lockdown!” and my partner nodded and said, “oh yes”.  I put my foot coverings back under the place where we sleep, and I placed my partner’s wrist clock on his furniture item, where his laptop sits.

Seriously though, I am starting to forget the English language which is a shame because I’m not fluent in anything else.  I could hold a short conversation in Danish and perhaps buy some meat and dairy products in Mongolian, but it’s English I rely on for the most part.

I used to tell my language students that the best thing they could do to improve their English was to practise as often as possible, with as many different people as possible.  To this end, I would advise them to try out their new vocabulary on strangers on the bus, to try out new grammatical structures with the people in the supermarket, or to even try and fall in love (ideally with someone who had better language skills than they).  All this was to prevent them losing skills they didn’t use, and usually, this strategy worked out fine.

I used to speak a lot.  I would speak at home, at work, after work, during the weekends and even in my sleep.  Now, I speak less and less and there are whole sections of the day in silence.  Nowadays, I use a fraction of the words I used to use, which has resulted in me using words like “nowadays”.  Most of my interactions take place on video calls or the phone, which makes the live, physical conversations the anomalies. 

I use more and more emojis in my written correspondence, I find reading entire articles exhausting, and it can take me a month to read a small paperback.  I believe that the sound of my voice has changed since March, and I’ve started leaving notes to myself which make little, or no sense at all, when I try to read them back to me.

Wednesday’s note, for example, said “forrest ring head.  Lisa (heads off)”.

That’s not even how you spell forest.

Thank heavens I have this blog where I can keep practising my English.  If I didn’t have the opportunity to use my words here, I might lose them forever, so I am very grateful to you, for reading.  Thank you for returning here, week after week, and for supporting my very public writing apprenticeship, and for keeping me so well. 

I wish you much wellness in return 😊

This pandemic is a peculiar backdrop, but our lives still go on.  People are still getting married and announcing their pregnancies, they’re still getting divorced and announcing their splits. They are changing jobs, and going back to college, and having arguments with family members and making new friends.  People work, they relax, they gossip, and they sleep.  They celebrate birthdays with cake and wine, and they cry alone, and together when it all goes wrong.  The sun comes up and the sun goes down, the sea comes in and the sea goes away again.  The clouds cover over the blue sky, and then they drift away again. 

Yes, those vapoury watery mass things float over the blue sky, and then they go away again.