Word memory

Gradually, the weather becomes more autumnal. It's still quite mild with daytime temperatures in the low twenties, but occasionally with stiff breezes which draw kite surfers out to offshore waters. Today started with overcast skies, and it rained before sunrise. With Sunday's sermon complete, I walked to Mercadona for weekend groceries, then visited the bridge over the charco,  (a word I'm training myself to repeat before I forget it again), to describe the local nature reserve with my camera, to see what there was to be seen early evening. 

I was fascinated to observe a purple swamp hen using its strong red clawed non-webbed feet to pull shoots from a clump of reeds, then proceed to strip the pith from its core to feed on. I obtained a few good photographs, including this one.

Several shots I took in what I must remember to call 'burst mode'. It's a setting I use so rarely I'd forgotten where it's located, so resorted to downloading the HX300 pdf manual to find out. It's not the most user-friendly of texts, so this took me a while. Mind you, it didn't help that I was unclear about the name of the rapid fire facility. All I could remember was the slang French photographic term for this, mitrailler, which means 'machine gun' after the noise made by a rapidly firing shutter.

Everyone complains about memory lapses as they get older, recall may still be there but isn't quite as efficient as it used to be, sometimes more erratic. If you use words rarely, it becomes an effort to find them when you need them. For me, writing this blog as often as I have something to tell about life in retirement, helps me remember the sequence of life's events when it threatens to blur, and acquires gaps from neglect. More than that though, the very varied act of narration is a fine way of exercising language memory, although I wouldn't dare to try writing in anything other than English. I admire those who do. 

Language has been a fascination to me since I was young. Poor teaching in Grammar School sadly sapped my speaking confidence in a way that took decades to recover from. With a little help from encounters with linguistic philosophy through Clare at University, however, curiosity never left me and exploring language still affords much pleasure.