A scary blip

I had a mental blip yesterday. One of those senior moments when, even before the episode is over, you start wondering if you have truly lost the plot. It went like this. After Sunday's car boot, I had a wallet full of fivers. I spent them, went to the ATM and filled up with tenners.

Then I went to the crystal stall in the market, to pay for two readings from a clairvoyant medium, one for me and one for my friend (on June 8th, in case you're wondering). The lady who has the stall also organises everything at the spiritualist church. Now for a short digression...

Last Friday, I and my young friend, Mr G's kind of step-daughter (he lived with her mum and brought her up from the age of three) attended an evening of mediumship with Jeff Phillips, aka The Laughing Postman. I have seen him twice. The first time was when he brought my dad through, describing him minutely, even down to the tune he was playing on the piano, to tell me I was going to take up studying again, do a further degree or diploma and write a book about healing (highly unlikely...) The second time, there was no message for me at all.

So last Friday, I left home at 6.30 pm to pick up Step, who lives twenty minutes away. She wasn't ready,. so we barely made the hall by 7.30, when Mr G dropped us off. In fact, the session was just starting. I could have done with the loo, but was confident there would be an interval. There wasn't. It got to 9.30 and I was wriggling in my seat. I turned to the organiser, who was sitting behind me, and asked if there was going to be a break and she said no. "Then I'm going to have to leave," I said, knowing the nearest loo would be in a pub ten minutes' hobble away. I couldn't use the hall's loo was it was through a door behind the medium and I would have disturbed everyone and the organiser said it wouldn't do at all.

Just as Step and I were leaving, Jeff said to her, "It's a shame you're going. I've got a message for you." "Sorry," said Step and followed me out, even though I told her to stay. So she had wasted a fiver and not had her message. Which brings us back to yesterday...

I had decided to treat Step to a private reading with another medium as an apology for last Friday. The readings cost £10 each. "That will be £20," said the crystal stall lady. I looked in my purse, stared at the three £10 notes in it and this is where my mind had its blip. "Oh dear, I've only got £15," said, handing her the three tenners. "I'll see what change I've got in my purse."

"But you've given me £30! Shall I keep £10 as a tip?" she quipped. And it was then, and only then, that my eyes and my mind recognised the notes as tenners, not fivers, and at once a cold wash of fear spread over me. I am losing my mind, I told myself as I crept away towards the bus stop.

I just missed the bus. As it doubles around the back of town before heading for the next bus stop, I put my head down and jogged through the middle of Uxbridge, but didn't jog quite fast enough (well, you don't when you suffer from stress incontinence!) and rounded the corner just as the bus was pulling away. There wouldn't be another for half an hour, so I went to the Cafe Nero and found I had ten stamps on my loyalty card and was due for a free coffee.

Twenty minutes, freebie and slice of carrot cake later (well, it's healthy if it's got carrots in, isn't it?), I returned to the bus stop and that's when I realised that, after all, I couldn't take that particular bus which drops me nearest the house, as I'd promised Mr G that I'd buy a jar of pasta sauce. Oops, nearly forgot.

That, plus the fiasco of mistaking tenners for fivers (they are different colours so why would I? Why was my mind still seeing images of blue fivers in my wallet?) makes me think I am on the downward slope to Dementia City. My mum developed it in her eighties. I am twenty years younger. But then there's Terry Pratchett, isn't there?

There is one straw to which I am clinging with all my strength. About seven years ago, I answered an ad in the local paper to take part in a survey at the Institute of Neurology in Queen's Square, the very place where Mr G went for his scans after his brain haemorrhage in 2000. It was part of a neurologist's PhD thesis. She had devised a series of tests and quizzes to measure mental agility in older people. It wasn't easy, but after it was all over, she told me that not only had I done well, in some of the tests I had scored higher than anyone else. "I don't think you're showing any signs of Alzheimer's!" she said confidently, adding, "In fact, I don't think you ever need to worry about getting dementia."

But I'm not eighty yet. There's still plenty of time... Was this a particularly bad senior moment? Can anyone top it? I hope I'm not alone!