Holding pattern

I never managed to make much progress on my California post this evening, but I did manage to forget to pop the Waitrose Peking duck I mentioned in the preamble into the preheated oven. I'm blaming it on the fact I was on hold to BT at the time to query a charge for some ancient model of phone that has suddenly appeared on our bill. The truth is probably sadder. I read in a Jonah Lehrer article Michael forwarded this evening that memory starts to fail in our mid-thirties. What hope now then??

I think I'll just side with Nietzsche: "The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to."

and

"Blessed are the forgetful; for they get the better even of their blunders."

I'll have to (remember to) ask Cheri and Hans-Jörg what the original German for these is.