Madeleine

I once tried to read Marcel Proust. A la recherche du temps perdu. Yes, in French. It wasn't long before I decided that life is too short. But I did get as far as the 'madeleine' that starts of the process of remembrance. I believe its some sort of French cake that is dunked in tea and has a strange effect on the brain, producing symptoms such as intellectual pretension and literary diarrhoea.

It is surprising what inconsequential things can trigger quite vivid memories. Just mentioning Proust himself, for example, never fails to remind me of Monty Python's 'summarising Prowst' competition, or of Bogart and Bacall bantering in The Big Sleep.

I often remember the day I bought my computer and brought all the kit back in a taxi. I remember how my trolley rolling against the cab's boot and the driver's concern that there might be damage. I remember his moaning and simmering road rage on the helter-skelter ride home. For some reason, which I cannot fathom, I remember all this whenever I wash my hair.

Rice Krispies make me think of Davy Crockett. A tin of salmon reminds me of my first wedding day. A waste-paper basket reminds me of an old friend from university and a politically incorrect joke we once shared. And brushing my teeth never fails to bring to mind a woman called Gail, who favoured me for a few weeks after I'd induced her to meet me with a note scribbled on a Laurel and Hardy postcard.

These are trivialities that trigger memories of important events. But sometimes its the event itself which haunts the detail of everyday life. So it is with Mavis.

I see her in movies. I met her on the day Burt Lancaster died. She used to say 'Hey ho', the way Addie Ross did at the end of A Letter to Three Wives. She used to imitate Audrey Hepburn saying 'I washed my hands and face before I come, I did.' She would come out with that sudden smile that Julia Roberts did in Sleeping with the Enemy. Notting Hill is a film that I must be alone to watch.

Every day I see the car she drove, the clothes she wore, the colour of her hair. And I hear songs all the time that were written for her - the nostalgia of Brown-eyed Girl; the angry frustration of Ain't no pleasin' you; the hollow defiance of That'll be the Day; the self-pity of I can't help it if I'm still in love with you.

As Noel Coward said, more or less, 'Never underestimate the potency of cheap music.' So I shall close and listen to the Everly Brothers, because whenever I wan't her, all I have to is dream.

Life just seems to pass us by.

Napoleon Wilson