Write-Place

 Day 3 of Posts From the Past   My idea to repost past blog posts of mine to remind myself (and others) of my ability to do so and to compare/contrast my thoughts, then and now continues. I am finding that not only does this improve memory and recall, but also fills my mind with other things that I need to be writing about.  With thanks to my children and grandchildren for making me a mother, and to my own Mother, not with us here on earth since 2018, but forever in my thoughts. 💖                                                                                    -   March 22, 2020 I knew weeks ago that I ought to be keeping a daily diary on here or elsewhere of events, appointments, thoughts, feelings and opinions.  I knew way back in August when I purpo...

Reblogged from April 2010 Not much topical, intellectual or discussable stuff in my mind at the moment (well, not that I can blog about anyway )so here's a piece to keep the blog on a "writing" theme. The title could be substituted for "Empty Brain" if wanted. Empty  Rooms  In the silence of another sleepless night  with shadows from the moon’s pale light  Blues and blacks shine through the window pane Like shadows calling out your name. And did you ever know That though you said that you would go I never thought it would be so. I watch the moonlight in the place where colours once bathed around your face And fragrant flowers are in the air The scent is here though you’re not there. And I wonder if you know That I never thought you’d go But you did and it is so. Morning comes with no regret of  memories I can't forget. Empty rooms and I climb the stairs where clothes lie draped on empty chairs. And I wonder if you knew how I always understood that although y...

"  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." Luke 2:10  -  King James Version (KJV Looking forward to Christmas Day with it's promises of gifts and spending time with the family, shopping for presents, writing cards, opening the doors of an Advent calendar each day,  awaiting the arrival of "Santa", decorating our homes - inside and out - are  all ways in which most of us spend the first twenty four days in December. I have done all of these things and more over the years, but have to admit that as each year goes by, increasingly I tend to leave the things which constitute this build up to the day,to my children and grandchildren. I do decorate the living room in my house though this is increasingly by adding more candles than are already there and putting lights around the "trees" and plants which already occupy the indoor space.  A small pine tree, which is an off shoot ...

Since my mother now  91 years old, moved out of her home of 62 years and into a care home, I have stored in my spare room a large collection of paper work, written over many years by my mother and father.  They were both involved in the Methodist Church since childhood, Dad being a Local Preacher and Mam leading a weekly Women's Group at "The Chapel" at Whitburn for around forty or more years.  Whitburn, Then and Now  by J Gordon Holmes When we look at these writings - readings, anecdotes, poetry and stories - with Mam, she remembers things sometimes and has forgotten them completely at other times, but she is always amazed that she wrote them and pleased that we can share them and the memories, together. One, about people who collect things, which we read the other day was particularly apt. It is a slow process as she finds it difficult to concentrate - as do I -  some days.  My Dad, who died in 1989, was a writer, musician, artist, local historian and aer...

According to an article in the Telegraph, if you remember this post, the memory of another one will die off.  Not just this post, of course, but all memories. A study by researchers at  University of Birmingham   and  the  MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit  in Cambridge have shown that remembering  makes us forget as the process of recall actually causes us to lose other memories. Doesn't seem a bad thing, does it, if we could actually choose which memory we wanted to ditch when the new one was formed, but I don't think it works quite like that.  It's the 'intentional recall' apparently that leads us to forget other experiences which interfere with retrieval.  The research is published in the  Nature Neuroscience . and is the first to isolate this 'adaptive forgetting mechanism' in the human brain.  We often say "the more I try to remember, the more I forget" and this research more or less sums this up. ...