I am swiftly coming to the conclusion that although the brain is a wonderful storage device mine seems to be acting like a PC in deep need of a defrag. It's as if the data is there, but it's struggling to come to the front with total recall.
Automatic things to do with work are no problem, entrenched family stuff is easy, but triggers to the older memory bank seem to stop halfway.
I was walking out of the office today to have one of my frequent nicotine dependency breaks when I heard the sound of a crow. This started a memory way back in the recess of my head and while I knew I should know, and I could guess at the recollection, I could not see the memory properly in my mind. I knew it must have been a memory of our house in Ireland because of the nest of crows in the churchyard. However the recollection was vague and there was no real picture or situation forming.
It's the same with smells, I smell a perfume or an everyday smell and the same phenomenon occurs. However the smell is usually fleeting and the memory stubbornly remains in the dark area of auxiliary storage. It's annoying to get the trigger and not see the vivid memory.
It's old age I suppose or the precursor to total memory loss.....