Jane Lovering: Memories are made of what was I talking about?

Well, I say listening, I was really flipping about between that and Radio 1 and then it occurred to me that maybe I should listen more closely. Because I’m beginning to wonder if Mature Onset ADD might be a real thing.

I always supposed that, as one got older, your attention span, or at least patience, got better. That the ability to sit and listen to dreary tales could be cultivated in later life, as the ability to move about with ease, and therefore get away, dwindled, then the power to remain awake whilst being regaled with stories about next door’s cat or a long list of people of whom you have never heard became stronger. Well, I fear I am living proof that this may not be the case.

My attention span is now so tiny that I have to write a list of instructions to myself on the back of my hand, otherwise I forget all the things I have just decided to do, and, this morning, I found myself bored by Just a Minute. Honestly, if people talking for one minute on a subject is too much to sit still for, then what hope is there for me?

And it’s terrible trying to watch television – I’ll start off glued to the one hour dramas, but by about half way through I’ve wandered off to look for a banana or start a craft project with macaroni and powder paint.

Cooking has gone out of the window – recipes are so static, aren’t they? And experimentation is frowned on, at least by the people who have to eat the end result and can’t work out what my fascination is with putting dried fruit in every single dish (liver and sultanas is particularly horrible, apparently).

My clue that I may have an actual problem came when I was flicking through a calendar and found myself wondering why they all have to have a whole month before you can turn the picture over. I’m bored with mine after a couple of weeks and frequently have to resort to sticking another picture over the top just to give my eyes something to do.

While I appreciate that ADD is something that a lot of parents have to cope with in their children, and that it can be something very difficult to manage, imagine how hard it is for my children to have to cope with a mother who cannot even concentrate for long enough to remember their names and birthdates, and has a tendency to refer to them all as “thing”.

But they have found a way around it, and it doesn’t involve Adult Ritalin or therapy, they just feed me wine with meals. At my age, I’m sleepy by lunchtime anyway! I have to go now, I left something cooking and...ooh, butterfly...

Jane Lovering is an award-winning romantic comedy writer published by Choc Lit.