The Vagaries Of Memory

Every night my mother takes a TV guide up to bed with her, only to find to her surprise there's one already there. I explain that she has two guides- one that comes with the Saturday paper and one that comes with the Sunday paper and she always keeps one of them upstairs. I then take the redundant one back to the living room.

But

The carer was asking her about the dinosaur on the Welsh dresser and she said, "Aileen and Anthony bought it in a charity shop to give to one of the grandchildren"- which is true in every detail.

Some things stick and other don't. I think she remembers about the dinosaur because it makes her chuckle.

My Problem With SF

Once again I pick up an SF novel (in this case Ian M Banks' Excession) only to be reminded that I don't like SF novels because everyone in them is so boring.  I don't think it can be an inflexible rule of the genre that real people and space ships don't mix because Wells breaks it- but where are  the other SF writers who give you characters you can care about?