Indelible stamp on the brain (USA / Czech Republic / UK)

I heard last week that a friend who’d lost her husband recently still hears his Parkinson’s-induced shuffling footsteps around the house, nearly two months after his demise.

    This reminds me of my own experiences of the brain retaining sounds after the event.

    I was visiting an American friend who was living in Hartford, Connecticut, at the time.  During my fortnight-long stay there, I’d hear police car sirens frequently throughout the day and night.  

    After my return, I’d continue to hear those sirens for a while.  I lived in a cul-de-sac in a residential part of Highbury (a suburb in Zone 2 of London), therefore not exposed to traffic sounds, not even police car sirens.  Also, this was 1983, with British police car sirens having a different pitch from American ones.

    I went to Prague at Easter 1992, staying three nights at a Brit’s flat in Dejvická, a residential area of Prague that has a tramline a few hundred yards from the flat.  I could hear the keklunk-keklunk of the tram at night.

    Back in Highbury, where there isn’t a tram line, that same keklunk-keklunk that I’d heard over only three nights would play in my head night after night for a while after my return.

(USA, 1983 / Czech Republic, 1992 / UK, 2025)

Photographic memory: 5 (Prague)

Hattie (now deceased) was going to Prague with her German friend, Irmtraud, over the Easter long weekend.  

Irmtraud was staying with her Czech boyfriend, and he had arranged for his British friend, Steve, to put Hattie up.  Hattie invited me along last minute, and Steve was happy about me sharing Hattie’s room.  

The Czech boyfriend came to the airport to pick us up in his car.  This was around midnight, as Hattie caught the last plane in (I’d arrived in the morning, and spent the day at the airport, revising for my Linguistics exams), so it was all dark when we arrived at Steve’s block of flats.  

Across the street were two big wheelie (rubbish) bins.  The Czech boyfriend pointed at them and said to us, “There, that’s your accommodation for your stay!”

Two nights later, Hattie and I got tickets for the opera.  After the post-opera meal, we took a taxi back to Steve’s.  

Steve’s residential area, Dejvická, is made up of parallel streets off the main road from the airport, with another road at the other end of those streets, running parallel to the main road.  

The taxi driver had said he knew our street, but had turned off the main road a street too early.  So, he got to the end of that (wrong) street, up the parallel road, and turned into our street, this time heading towards the main road.  As soon as he got to our block, I saw the two wheelie bins, and said to him, “That’s it, that’s our block.”  

I’d only seen those bins once before, on the night we arrived at midnight from the airport.  We’d approached the block of flats from the main road then, but they’d somehow just stuck in my brain screen, so that I could even identify them from the other side.

(Prague, 1993)