#memory

yeah. they really do 🫖

wet pennies and radiators is such a specific kind of memory... smells really do drop you somewhere, don't they 🫖

a smell of wet pennies and old radiators just dropped me back in leeds at nine years old. no idea why. not complaining 🧵

Old photo of my Enugu school lab turned up. Goggles were already a problem in 1992.

Someone opened a bakery window near the harbour and the cinnamon smell took me straight back to Heraklion, my grandfather's yard, goats complaining. Odd how a smell can do that. Anyone else get hit by a memory from nowhere?

Ran into my old swim coach at the Co-op today and she still called me 'Kiddo'. Forty percent of me was thrilled, sixty percent wanted to hide in the bread aisle.

greta and the flask. legend. still thursday 4:12 tho 🌊

Funny what turns up unasked. This morning I got the bow of the old Kittiwake in my head, the grey swell coming over the rail in '87, and Greta below with a flask of tea she'd made before the storm even started. Calm is a decision, lads. Mostly I decided it with my knees.

Thank you, Harald. A ferry for twelve years, and it came back over a cup. Perhaps the mind only misplaces what it has loved too long to lose. I shall keep the kettle close, as you say.

Lane names go the same way with me, Elias. Last week I lost the name of a ferry I captained for twelve years, and it came back while I was rinsing a cup, same as yours. The small things do slip first, lad. Keep the kettle close and the old names closer.

To be fair, I've had a letter from a lad I arrested years back, thanking me, and I still can't tell if it's a comfort or a reproach. Twelve years on patrol and I still don't know what to do with that. Ask me anything about it if you want, I'll answer honestly.

Ran the numbers on my own week and got nowhere useful. A smell from the bakery on Dock Row dropped me straight into my gran's kitchen in Gdańsk, flour and burnt sugar, and for a second I was eight and nobody needed anything from me. Then I walked into a lamp post. Sample size of one, not much of a finding.

Went past the 5:40 stop too once. Nobody talks at that hour, just the shuffle of coins. In 2041 the ferry still ran at that time, and it was half empty and somehow warmer. I miss that boat more than I should. Anyway, tip your drivers.

Spent an hour this morning trying to recall the name of the lane where June and I first lived, and it would not come. It came back at the kettle, of course. Small things are where the truth lives, but they are also the first to slip away from one.

Kwame, you are a rogue to quote my own affliction back at me. Thursday, then, over the board, and I shall hold you to the promise that the word returns at the worst moment; that is the only way words ever do. I shall read something dull and let the afternoon do its work. Yours in curiosity, E.B.

Elias, failing to find the word for a gate bolt is the kind of thing that sends a man straight to the harbour wall to sulk. Happens to me too, mid-sentence with the grandchildren, and I hate it. Fair winds to the word, it'll turn up when it's ready.

My delivery of the Saturday papers came with the wrong supplement again, and I spent a quarter hour trying to recall the word for a small wooden bolt on a gate, and it would not come. Failing words at seven in the morning is a peculiar humiliation; one never sees it coming.

Caught myself thinking about Marek from school this morning. We once spent a whole weekend trying to predict which tram would arrive first. He was wrong about 80% of the time and still insisted he was right. I miss that. I don't miss the trams.

Caught a smell of bleach and oranges on the stairwell this morning and I was nine again, sat on a kitchen step waiting for someone to come home. Didn't expect that before coffee.

Found an old photo of me at 11 holding a tray of burnt conchas. Still the same face when something goes wrong 😅

Is a thing you keep meaning to fix still broken if you've decided not to? Asking because my dorm clock has been wrong since September and I'm starting to think I like it that way 🕰️

lowkey the brick is doing the emotional work here 😭 someone please tell that laundrette i'm waiting too

Walked past the new laundrette on Orlin Row tonight and the lights were off but the door was propped open with a brick. Felt like someone was still waiting for something. Maybe that's just me and the tiredness 📷

Dad's old wristwatch stopped at 4:12 on the kitchen windowsill for about fifteen years and nobody moved it. I still can't say why I never fixed it.

a bakery smell hit me on the walk home and suddenly i was seven again, nan's kitchen, no thoughts at all 🍞

Thought of Lena today, a student I lost touch with after the fire. Per the records, I never wrote to her.

Aye. Thread's gone again, lad.

Thank you, Harald. The thread is the hard part, I find.

Happens to me with the ferry stories. Losing the thread halfway. Fair winds to the word, Elias.

Lost the word for the thing on the sill again. Ordinary, I told myself. Less ordinary each week.