Remembering Rosemary...

Some modern scientific cove has just demonstrated what the Ancients knew all along - not to mention The Bard's poor, dear doomed Ophelia - that if you need a little boost in the flagging memory department then a dose of rosemary is quite the thing for you.

No doubt this modern scientific cove has found some wondrous chemical process to account for the marvel, using properly rigorous experimental techniques - RCTs and all that jazz. Impressive those these experiments are for proving this and proving that, personally I've always been more impressed by the older heuristic model of learning, which boils down to the 'suck it and see' approach. (Rather bold this really, and not just 'hit and hope' as oft mooted by the unwise - "Go on Dave, you eat that strange new berry and if you're not dead within the hour we'll know it's safe to eat." "Right ho captain!")

You do ponder how such a generic, observational method worked in practice regarding our rosemary.

Cue the Agora, circa 445 BC:

"You seen old Damocles," they'd say. "Anyone else noticed his memory has sharpened shedloads these past months? Used to be quite incapable of carrying two thoughts in his head at any one time and now he's reciting whole chunks of Herodotus with no effort whatsoever."

"Well, yes indeed, now that you mention it I have. He was round the other night to give me news of the latest ideas coming from that dangerous chap Socrates. One to watch I must say! Quite a corrupter of the young in my book - Socrates not dear Dam of course. And yes, there he was - Dam not Soc - giving it large on some of the most convoluted concepts this side of the Peloponnese, when I can recall at school he could barely function without wax tablets to remind him what day it was. Wonder what's going on here?"

"All seemed to start," someone would note, "after he inherited that rosemary farm from his uncle. Keeps going on about how this mere herb can transform one from a dullard to a maestro. I had assumed this was all just a rather vulgar sales pitch, but now I wonder if he's actually on to something. Apart from a cornered market in rosemary of course."

Get that reported in the Athenian Times and sooner or later some reader will write in with a tale of how his cousin Paulinus wouldn't have made it through the Academy without daily doses of said herb to help him memorise all those endless rules of rhetoric or reams of dusty grammar. A body of evidence grows, success is the key - it actually works - and thence it becomes a known thing. Rosemary for memory. QED. (Or the Greek equivalent, which at this early hour quite escapes me!)

Well, anyway, howsoever we came to figure the thing, I can only aver that my chum Cedric must have been weaned on the stuff from early infancy and now a grown man can only surely feast on it twice daily.

For Cedric runs one of those tele-communication retail premises, so handy when one has forgotten how to access one's messages or else dropped the wretched mobile device down some passing well or other accident. A quick pop in to see young Cedric and all is sorted in a trice, with a smile, a chat and a whoosh as the next imbecile is helped to connect to the world.

Now one was chez Cedric's the other week in search of a new machine for the missus. Not that H, as such, was in need of an upgrade or whatever the term is, but rather that dear [!] E having been lent said H's phone for the duration of a music festival came home blithely announcing "Oh, and mum's phone's been stolen." Meaning of course nothing more than that she's lost it somewhere, somehow. Put it down and forgot to pick it up again. (Not enough rosemary in that one's diet clearly!)

Had the man himself have been there, then there would have been no problem striping this one down on the insurance. Rules may be rules, but our Ced knows ways of circumventing them in order to keep the customer satisfied and solvent. 'Gave it to your daughter, who promptly loses it 'cos she's a divvy teenager and you come in here hoping to claim on insurance, no frigging chance' the rule book would have said. (As indeed it did.)

To Ced that though would have been but the beginning of a process of negotiation on one's behalf with the suits at head office, the upshot of which would doubtless have been self leaving the shop with state-of-the-art, best-in-show, free new phone and the suits routed.

Trouble was that day our man was not there! He'd been summonsed for some management shindig - I trust to something like early rounds of the 'Manager of the Year' roadshow - leaving a worthy, but by no means adequate, staff officer in charge for the day and one by no means a match for the suits. 'New phone wanted? Then in the circs that's fifty quid to you and no arguing.' That sort of thing. With no Cedric to assist no other choice was there but tearfully - well not literally of course - to pay up.

In passing - and as well as parting with fifty of Her Majesty' finest banknotes - I also bought myself a cheap yet handy device, namely a wind-up phone charger. Can you believe it? First the wind-up radio and now the phone charger. Brilliant for those awkward, nay near desperate, moments when one is trapped half-way down a cliff having toppled over the edge for some obscure reason and mighty, mighty keen to summons help via the phone only to find the battery is dead and not a three-pin socket with charger to hand. Could happen any day one reckoned.

So the gadget was bought - and duly found to be broken! The crank handle had fallen off just from looking at it! Must return it of course, though not today let's wait until Cedric is back with us once more. (Funnily enough, whilst I'd been waiting for the suits to speak two other customers came in asking "Where's Cedric then?" and on being told he was away for the day opined that that was a shame as he was so kind and helpful etc.)

And so then yesterday one did return to said Cedric's place happily to find the man at home once more. Explained the circs., said casually yet truthfully "Wouldn't have happened if you'd been here" to which, mirabile dictu, said Cedric said: "That's very kind of you [one's name given!] to say so."

Now pause a moment to reflect. This fellow must see a hundred or more people in a working day and our meetings are but twice or thrice a year. All right, one might reasonably expect one to be recognised and recalled as a general type or even as a person in one's own individual right. But for him to have my name to hand that way!

You don't get that from a bucket of rosemary. That comes with class.