As I get older I find I try to capture in memory more fully than ever the passing marvellousness of an ordinary day by writing down what happens in a journal. The attempt to capture everything is, of course, impossible. I once experimented by attempting at noon one Saturday to describe every single thing that I had done and said and thought and that had happened to me in the first two hours after I woke that morning. After more than an hour of writing I had written about twenty pages and had just got past the dreams I remembered having, showering and doing a few simple exercises, looking out the window at the garden in sunlight and telling my wife how beautiful it looked, my attempt to wake my sons, the first glass of orange juice, the ice tinkling in the glass and the taste on my
