The week began with a phone call from a funeral director informing me that a lady from Mountain Top Avenue had died. He wondered if I knew if it was in my parish.

“It sounds familiar,” I said.

“That’s because it is,” he said.

He obviously had the map in front of him with all the local boundaries; I didn’t.

We made arrangements, and the phone call was over.

The phone call however had me thinking about my failure to remember street names. With 10 years knowledge of one area, why now do I still have to go and look up the map to know where streets are? When people ask me to visit Mrs McGinty in Park Lane, why do I have to ask them where that is again?

Then I realised that if you told me that Mrs McGinty lived in the same street as Mrs McGillicuddy, I would know exactly where that was.

Signposts in my parish are the people I’ve got to know and the places they live. My knowledge of the parish is based upon the knowledge of those I have visited and built relationships with. I know the way round a good number of my districts by the people I am to encounter, rather than by the house number and street name.

It is of course frustrating for flower ladies and elders alike, as they ask me what street they should take something to, and I have to search through the people in my brain to find one connection that might give me an address.

I would imagine that I’m not peculiar in my association memory, and perhaps others find they frustrate those more logical with their odd methods of remembering.