Memory trickory

Read the obituary of Peter O'Toole in the DT this morning, in accordance with the house custom of reading the daily newspaper a day late.

First thought was that 'Lawrence of Arabia' has worn very well, there not being many films of that vintage, more than 50 years old, which I would watch now with much pleasure. I vaguely remember first seeing it in a very small, shed of a cinema in Newquay while on a family holiday in the sixties and subsequently seeing a rather grand retread in then rather grand cinema at Marble Arch in the nineties. The web site for this last suggests that the once huge auditorium has now been carved up; a pity, but I suppose we have to let the world move on.

Second thought was that I had actually seen the great man in the 'Apple Cart' at the Haymarket Theatre, vaguely remembering a tall, gangling sort of chap playing the languid king. Fame at third hand. But the catch with this is that I was living in Norwich at the time, and while not impossible that I should have been to the show, it does seem a touch unlikely.

On the other hand, the memory is holding firm that I have been to the 'Apple Cart' in the West End and the Professor does not admit to any other possible production than this one - although he does allege that the play had its world première in Warsaw in Polish in 1928. I must make further enquiries, always being intrigued by the wayward ways of memory.

Nearer home, I was thinking about Brighton Mick (see 3rd April) yesterday, and I was having trouble remembering the name of the town he was brought up in, just to the west of Brighton proper, and a name with which I often have trouble. Don't know why. Yesterday I thought that it had two syllables and perhaps started with a 'b' or perhaps a 'p', getting as far as Bromsgrove. This morning, half way around the Horton Clockwise, got to Paulsgrove, and then all of a sudden the right answer popped up, Portslade. Still none the wiser as to why I have a blockage about the name; still can't think of any reason why the brain might think that repression or even suppression might be the way forward. The place itself is clearly there, so perhaps it is no more complicated than some stray alcohol having wiped the main index entry.