Missed by 99.999% of the world’s population (including me) was the fact that last week The Slog”s alltime hits rose above 12 million. During that time, your correspondent’s posts attracted 133,000 comments, which roughly speaking means that 0.8% of you ever comment about my stuff, and the remaining 99.2% simply lurk…or decide I’m completely mad, and move on. I’ve been reliably informed by several other bloggers over the years that this is pretty normal.

I didn’t spend much time contemplating these stats, as I was – as always these days – answering lots of questions put to me by Polish persons. Around midday, I wandered about the house in search of something (probably my memory, I can’t remember) and discovered that I had brewed four mugs of coffee, none of which had been more than 25% consumed. Being asked to make decisions, I find, gets in the way of discovering which way is up. Decisions are really distractions from what matters: they are the urgent that overtakes the important. Trouble is, by the time I’ve answered earnest questions from Cracow about the exact placement of kitchen drawer handles, I’ve forgotten the relationship between Time and Space in the Universe.

Getting old is not just about forgetting: that is a gross oversimplification. It is primarily about forgetting whether you forgot to do something or not. This is where the anxiety originates; and as a result of it, some friends get four Christmas cards, while close relatives get none.

What’s more, ‘Forgetfulness’ as a descriptor cannot even begin to describe the inability to capture thoughts one used to grab as if they might be waist-high plums. With me, this started as a difficulty in remembering what I sought in the room I’d entered. Today, it is more a question of what on earth I was doing in the previous room that caused me to be in this second one in the first place.

It would be absolutely terrific if, in tandem with this lack of grip, one forgot the parlous state of the world. Sadly, that bit tends to remain sadistically intact. This is a terrible shame. Oh how marvellous it would be if – all the memory hard-drives having been wiped – my children could easily persuade me that Britain was selling 13 million C5s to the Chinese every month, 8-track had become the basis for all inhome recording, and Jeremy Hunt was Britain’s most wanted fugitive from justice.

“A man hears want he wants to hear and disregards the rest”. And Paul Simon became President of the Untied States, declaring all monied lobbying and foreign oil-inspired military adventures unconstitutional. Or something.