This elephant made from waste pipes is just under a mile from our home and has been the subject of many a ‘oh I’m going to have that for my pic of the day one of these days’ by both of us. Today, I decided it was my perfect moment as I had an elephant related tale to tell. David has been eyeing it up for his ‘childhood memories’ feature this month and I’m sure you will all see his interpretation soon within his gallery….of course his photo will be significantly superior to mine! (But my story’ll be better!)

The local area seems to have a connection with elephants though I’m not sure why – there was a nightclub about a mile from this elephant called Tuskers when I first moved here though that’s long-since gone.

Anyway – to my elephant story.

I have the memory of an elephant – in fact my sister has one too. Hers remembers things from our childhood that have long-since been forgotten by myself and our parents. She’ll suddenly pipe up with ‘do you remember when….’ Then regale us with a story from the past that the rest of us only remember the sketchiest details from.

My memory retains useless business facts – names of people I worked with ten or twenty years ago, KitKat’s brand share from 1986 (32%), what the Duracell batteries ad was in 1975 (pink bunny, which they’ve recently returned to having discovered it’s what everyone associates with a Duracell ad), when Zantac was launched OTC (1994)…..I could go on but I sense I’m already getting boring!

Today, while prepping for an important client meeting tomorrow morning, my colleague (Ginny) said something about an old project that we’d done some years ago that might bear some relevance for tomorrow’s meeting. She was trying to work out when the project was done. I said ‘summer 2002’ , she argued, ‘no, it must have been longer ago than that’ – I said go and check. When I walked up to her desk an hour or so later, she said ‘you were right, Linda….June 2002, how do you do it?’.

The answer is I don’t know – I just seem to keep that sort of stuff filed away somewhere in the dark recesses and can pull it out when I need to.

My glee at knowing the answer was short lived though when I remarked ‘you see, you should trust me, I’ve got the memory of an elephant’ to which a wit (and I won’t mention which one) replied…….’yes, and an arse like one too, Linda!’.

There goes his cup of tea when it’s my round next!