During yesterday’s glorious late afternoon sun, I was enjoying an after-work cycle around the country lanes of Bedfordshire. Before setting off I had studied my Ordnance Survey map (Explorer 193) on what I thought was a sufficient number of occasions for the twists and contours to have been etched into the inside layer of my skull. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that heading a football countless times, drinking beer on a barely countable number of occasions, and other crimes against my cranium had deprived me of a memory that had allowed me in childhood to recite capitals of the Polynesian archipelago and number of balls faced for each of the leading 50 scores in Test cricket (or something similarly repulsive in its precociousness). Continue reading →