Posted by Peter Ceresole on October 05, 2013 at 23:01:35 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Ransome on the East Coast? posted by Owen Roberts on October 04, 2013 at 11:40:14:
People’s memories about timescales are notoriously fallible, Peter.
I agree- and not just about timescales. I kept diaries not as a record, but as planners; Datadays, a4, one page per day. I was making TV programmes. Some of the time, a page of A4 was barely enough for a day's notes and Todos, even in cryptic form. I have a shelf of these old diaries, and now I realise that whole chunks of my life, crucially lived at the time, have simply disappeared from my consciousness. I can recall a great deal of stuff in great detail, but have absolutely no idea of how much of it is recreated from other memories and made into a coherent stories. This why I think that much 'eyewitness' evidence is quite worthless, except as a clue to the witnesses' state of mind at the time of recall. It mainly matters in court proceedings, where I am sure that far too much credence is given to eyewitnesses, and injustices result. In this case, five years here or there is a trivial matter.