The senior moment

Orna Mulcahy on people we all know

Lisa is stabbing numbers into the keypad at the bank to no effect whatsoever, which isn't surprising, as she's entering the code for her mobile phone, not her PIN at all. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," she says to the fresh-faced girl behind the counter, who's wearing the God-give-me-patience look she probably reserves for desperate old biddies who can't find their passbooks. Lisa is not one of those. Normally, her memory is very good, and of course she knows her PIN. She uses it all the time, but only at the hole in the wall, whereas here in the unfamiliar, pressured surroundings of the bank, with a shuffling queue behind her, she can't think straight. What the hell is it? She has it written down somewhere in a code in one of her diaries - or is it in her address book, cunningly concealed as part of a phone number? Now she comes to look for it, where is her address book? She hasn't seen it for ages.

No, the PIN is gone, taking more of her brain cells with it. Clearly, it's the start of a neurological disorder that will have her drooling over a bib at the age of 44. Lately, Lisa has to admit that her excellent memory is quite selective, and although she can remember all the words of Bohemian Rhapsody, not to mention the phone numbers of various ex-boyfriends, she frequently tears the house apart looking for her car keys. Summer 1990 is like yesterday, so why can't she recall what they did over the weekend? Then there are all the items that have just disappeared: Mummy's garnet brooch, her life-insurance policy, all slips from the dry-cleaner and the spare set of keys to the apartment that she has let out to someone who is not paying the rent.

And even though she keeps a diary, how could she have missed lunch with her best friend from school, who called her from the restaurant while she off trying on shoes with a vague feeling that there was something else she was supposed to be doing? Where, too, is the 90-day warranty for her iPod, which the man in the shop now tells her has suffered a fatal error - the only fatal error being that she bought it for cash at Christmas - and did she just this morning miss a dental appointment?

Things just seem to pop out of her brain, in the same way that credit notes pop out of the zipped-up bit of her purse and are never seen again - and pop in again in the middle of the night, when she frequently sits bolt upright, remembering her brother-in-law's mother's name or, handily, her PIN. As for the complete strangers who stop her on the street for a chat when she hasn't a breeze who they are, she makes a special effort to be nice. After all, they could be related.