During a particularly stressful period in the mid 1990’s I developed a condition which looked like the beginning of shingles. The usual course of events would have been to ring Mum and ask if I had had chicken pox. However, Mum had died a few months before and that option was no longer available.

In thinking about this problem, I realised that to keep track of issues like this I needed a diary – a lifelong diary, that I could check what had happened in the past. A little more thought and I realised that there were many other events that I had forgotten or had hazy memories that could have been fixed by an oft repeated saying from my Mum “The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink”.