Memory Is A Strange Thing

Many years ago I read The Book Of Excuses. I always remembered its author as Chris Welch, whom I knew to be a music journalist. I thought The Book Of Excuses was very lame. Last month I ran into Chris Welch at the fortieth birthday party of ALCS, and we got talking. I mentioned the book to him, and he told me it was not one of his. Are you sure, I asked? Or words to that effect. I was so certain he was the author, but figuring he might be ashamed of it, him being a pleasant guy, and it being a party, I stopped a long way short of accusing him of lying. Later I looked up the book; it was written by Gyles Brandreth, and on looking it over again at Saint Pancras, I realised it wasn’t so bad after all.

Awhile ago I found a ticket to a Joe Satriani concert in the suitcase atop my wardrobe; that’s it below.

I was very much into Satriani at the time and still am; in June 2011, I listed his Flying In A Blue Dream as one of my top fifteen albums. I remember running along the seafront at Blackpool in 1990 late at night listening to The Forgotten (Part Two) as waves crashed against the rocks, something that made me feel great to be alive. Yet I have no recollection at all of the December 1995 concert at Wembley Arena. I must have been there, surely?

How then can any system of justice, criminal or civil, entertain prosecutions of historical cases on the fragmented confabulations of head cases, attention seekers, and plain, old-fashioned liars?