Aides-memoire are rats cloaked as puppies and will bite your arse. I was once acquainted with a bloke named Fred, a man who swooned at mirrors and who knew his cholesterol level to the third decimal place. He was a grandee of sorts, a man who had to be reckoned with because he was high up in the general scheme of things.
When meeting him, free drink in hand at a send-off, a launch, a publisher’s binge, a premiere, or some other wordy conclave where the backbiters feast on vertebrae, I’d always forget his name. He’d bristle and roll his shoulders as if limbering for combat. “It is Frederick, Anson.
But just go with ‘Fred’ if the entire three syllables are too taxing for you.” I decided to remember his name by pairing him in my mind with a famous Fred. I should have used Flintstone, Weasley, Astaire, or The Great.
But I chose Freddie Mercury because this guy was gay, and when I think of Freddie Mercury, I think not only of his toothy high jinks upfront of Queen, but of the more commendable mano-a-mano-a-mano sexcapades for which he became so justly celebrated. So, a gay Freddie was an aide-memoire par excellence for this fellow, I thought. “Once you concede to yourself that you’ve forgotten someone’s name, this vacuum, this blank, becomes their hideous disfigurement.
” Credit: Fairfax But when I next ran into him, I fell into a mnemonic panic, my aide-memoire said “au revoir”, and reaching out to the ghost of F. Mercury for help, I found him gone – an.
