AMNESIACS ANONYMOUS.

This is the kind of thing I dread: Someone coming up to me after not having seen me for about twenty-five years, grabbing hold of my free arm which is needed to give hand signals to the dog and saying:

“Hullo. I remember you! Weren’t you the blind lady who used to play the piano at St. Crispin’s church? Oh it’s such a shame! Nine tenths of it are now leaning precariously over the cliff edge at Sink-down-in-in-the-Marsh while the other tenth is being sucked down. Each Sunday we pray not to topple over or get sucked down into a mucky bog of confusion. Anyway that’s why we don’t sing too loud and sound so joyless and why we don’t have all those percussive instruments playing loud gospel stuff but you were weren’t you? The girl who played the piano with your lovely dog”.

Playing for time I cry:

“Ah! St. Crisp Packets! I remember it well. There was an old duck at the back who used to crunch peanuts up during the sermon”!

“That’s right dear! Mrs. Palfreyman! Oh she’s long gone on to gain her just reward from the creator of the universe! So I was right! It is you”!

“Well actually, no. I mean I was there and I admit to wondering whether her false nashers would pop out and provide another kind of plate for the collection to be collected in but I can’t play a note simply because I can’t co-ordinate my hands. You must be thinking of another blind person. We’re all different you know”.

“Oh no! I know it was you. I remember your dog”,

which by now is yawning, stretching beneath its harness and will soon lie down from sheer boredom, thinking:

“When the hell is she going to get on with it”?

“Do you know who I am”?

This is where I start scratching my head vigorously, hoping she’ll think I’m lousy and telling her that all the kids at my local school have nits! Then it dawns on me. I have the perfect answer:

“Why? Have you got amnesia”?

At this this poor misled sighted individual guffaws loudly, hugs me and slips two of my discs as her bear hug has not decreased in strength with age and I find I need physioterrorism again and she says (probably with a triumphant smile on her disillusioned face)

“There! I knew it was you Mary! I remember you had such a wonderful sense of humour”.

With that she flounces off in triumph and I fail to point out my name is June. Well all blind people are the same aren’t they?

Also I miss two good opportunities to tell her that:

1: You don’t play the piano with a dog and:

2 The dog she saw has also gone on to gain it’s just reward from that great vet in the sky and it looked a whole lot different from this one. I slink off home feeling that in the great scheme of things I have once again come off the loser.