We were sitting by the fire last night.

It was very cosy. There was a strong wind outside, so the coal fire was smoking badly which is does when the wind is from a certain direction, but we were warm and contented.

I was trying to read a book between the coughing and sneezing, and I could see Herself through the blue haze reading a magazine.

“There’s a questionnaire here” says Herself. “It tests to see how absent minded you are”

So she started firing questions at me.

You know the kind of thing – “Do you ever repeat a joke or story to the same person” [yes] or “Do you lose items around the house” [yes].

There were twelve questions in all. I asked her how I rated.

“I reckon you scored more that 16” says Herself.

“There weren’t 16 questions” says I.

“No” says Herself “there are only twelve. That’s strange”

It turned out there was a scoring system but she had absent-mindedly missed that.

So she tried working out my score but got confused.

“How many did you answer Yes to?” she asked.

“I’ve forgotten. I can’t remember the questions.”

So she tried asking them again, but we got confused with the scoring system. So we dropped it.

She went back to her magazine and I went back to my book and the smoke went back to filling the room.

We don’t need some damned magazine trying to tell us our minds are getting old. We know our brains are as sharp as ever.