Gentlemen, I’ve heard it said that memory is rather like a railway system which has had random sections of rail removed. Perhaps the result is rather similar to that party game we used to play as children – musical chairs. The tracks are used by many trains and hence many millions of us individual bipedal life forms, constantly journeying, crisscrossing and subject to quite extreme reversals of time. Consequently it is not uncommon to find sections of our future slipping away only to be replaced by a barely remembered but intense experience of suckling at our mother’s breast.
Similarly you may believe that you have no memory of Mrs Wilkinson but you have certainly shared an intimate history. There are rumours that for many years she had a key role in the security services, some say MI6, some say MI5, others (not many, it’s true) prefer the conspiratorially more interesting theory that it was an altogether more shadowy, clandestine body, embedded out of sight, but with an endlessly psychotic influence on the thinking and (hence) actions of government ministers. For others she is merely the wife of a Mr Gerald Wilkinson (1875-1963), a minor establishment figure, fond of collecting obscure impressionist paintings and spending most of his time in deepest Gloucestershire.
A Mr Ted Blacclestone, a 1960s Trotskyite, with bad teeth, worse dandruff and very little integrity, swore he had an affair with Mrs Wilkinson in the early fifties, swore that it was the very same Mrs Wilkinson. He claims her name was (and is) Emma and bewilderingly, there, on his Facebook page, is an admittedly, blurry b/w photo of Ted and a woman identified as Emma – Ted and Emma. Added to which I have personally heard it corroborated by someone who is generally most reliable in matters of this sort, that, yes, this is the Mrs Wilkinson. So there we are. You are, needless to say, free to believe what you like. I’ve heard it said that lies are like raw black molasses, but I’m rather inclined to see them as golden syrup. There’s the illusion that you can see through it through them without realising just how sticky it really is and in its very sweetness and general yumminess you never quite realise what it is going to do to the teeth of your critical sensibilities.
Please be warned, gentlemen, do not stray from the narrow path that has been allotted to you. Do not be tempted by adventurous tales of the pampas. This will merely cause you much avoidable suffering, regret and pointless delay.
Mrs Wilkinson remains vigilantly on your case.