I have frequently extolled the virtues of a crap memory.

There is that wonderful ability to read my favourite books time and time again, having forgotten what they were about or how they ended.

Equally I can enjoy old films having forgotten completely that I have seen them before.

Everyone knows my memory is shite so they don't expect me to remember their names.

There are one or two drawbacks however.

On Friday I went looking for my passport.

I should explain that I have little places around the gaff where I keep important things and other places where I keep my really important things.  Now I class passports as being really important as they are really fucking difficult to get in the first place, so I went to my really important spot.

No passports.

I couldn't understand this as my system is pretty much foolproof.  To be on the safe side I checked where I keep the merely important stuff.

No passports.

I hate losing things as it gets me into a state where I start ripping the place asunder, and even when I take a breather the old head is still mentally searching all those places where the lost item could possibly be.  I can have no rest until the item is found.

I spent Friday evening ripping the house apart.  I checked everywhere.  I checked all the cupboards, all the drawers and the refrigerator.  I checked the old suitcases and the briefcase where I keep my magazines personal papers.  I checked Herself's underwear drawer I was so desperate.  I checked the car out though I knew the passports couldn't be there as I had cleaned the car out not so long ago.  I still checked it though.  Three times.  They weren't in the microwave either.

I woke yesterday still wondering where the fuck two little passports could be hiding.  I had tried everywhere.  I checked the car again, as something at the very back of my mind was telling me that I was getting warm there.

I spent the entire day ripping my junk room office apart because logic told me that's where they had to be.  I found loads of interesting things and while I was at it I threw away half a ton of junk and shredded another half ton of papers that I mightn't want certain people to see.

Still no passports.

There was still that nagging thought that the car was the place to look though.  I don't know why, particularly as I had searched it at least three times.  I searched it a fourth time, and then a fifth.  Did you know that boiled sweets in a glove compartment can get really fucking sticky after a few years?

And then something happened.  A glimmer of a memory had flitted in and out of my brain like a bee flying in one window and out another.  Something about a really neat hiding place? 

Eureka!

There are pockets on the back of the front seats, but they are so well hidden they look like part of the seat.  I owned the car for years before I even discovered them, and naturally I had forgotten about them again.

There were the passports.  I must have slipped them in there the last time we came back from France three years ago, and I have been driving around with them ever since.

You have no idea how relieved I was.  You see, the bloke who made them for me is now in the South of Spain.

And naturally I have forgotten his address.