I arrived on a farm recently to record an interview and the farmer had a great welcome for me. Nothing unusual there, except that he welcomed me back to the farm.

For the life of me I could not remember the last time I was there. Fair enough, I have been to hundreds of farms over the years, but, up until that point, I am sure I would never visit one for the second time only for me to believe it to be my maiden visit.

I played along anyway, so as not to offend, looking out for some landmark that would jog my memory. It would be funny if it wasn’t true. With middle age comes a dodgy memory – and I worry about it sometimes.

Then I heard Ruby Wax on RTÉ’s Radio 1. She has just written a book called A mindfulness guide for the frazzled. It resonated.

“The first thing that goes when you are in a state of high anxiety is your memory,” she told Ryan Tubridy. Aha! So, I am in a high state of anxiety and stress. Is that what is causing these momentary lapses in memory? I am not so sure.

But she did make some valid points about the world we live in and the way we are bombarded with information and people and happenings from the minute we get up until we try to slow the brain down at night. The mind can only take so much.

Whatever about getting older and conditions such as dementia, I put my episodes down to a lack of concentration and maybe laziness. I should live in the moment more. I am often introduced to people and 10 seconds later I forget their names. That isn’t a medical condition. It’s called not concentrating, in my case. I have made it my new year’s resolution to make a better effort when it comes to focusing like this.

There is nothing worse than forgetting names. And it happens to me so often. Forgetting a name can often be interpreted by the offended as plain ignorance, which makes me more frazzled, as Ruby Wax would say. And what makes it worse is when somebody approaches you and says: “You don’t know me, do you?”

I search the mind by going through the alphabet to figure out the person’s name. Most times it works.

Anyway, I now realise that training the brain is as important in midlife as training the body. Now, where did I leave my cup of tea …

I met an old acquaintance recently, a retired garda. In his mid-50s and with his 30 years’ service complete, he looks too young to be retired. He has a few irons in the fire but misses the force. He lives in the countryside and would happily go back to the office on a part-time basis to process gun licences and other routine paperwork which takes up garda time. While the moratorium on garda recruitment was lifted 16 months ago, easing the strain on resources, rural crime remains a scourge. So, does it not make sense to look at allowing recently retired gardai the option of taking over the pen pushing on a voluntary basis (or working for their pension) and allow active members of the force to get out on the beat? I can already hear the legal eagles and representative unions clearing their throats to tell me why it would be a total non-runner.