There’s a popular online game doing the rounds.
Created by Monsieur Benjamin Tran Dinh, the Metro Memory Game has become an instant hit.
You can access it here: https://london.metro-memory.com
Tran Dinh, a software engineer, is interested in trains and maps.
I am interested in maps, as well.
And trains journeys – as long as they’re overground.
It’s a memory game, really, rather than a train game or a map game.
Thing is, I very, very rarely used the Tube when I lived in London: I rocked up there a few days after the King’s Cross fire (the worst fire in the Underground’s history, see https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/museum/history-and-stories/historical-fires-and-incidents/the-kings-cross-fire-1987/).
I left London in 2004.
Still, I’ve managed to remember 269 stations in two days.
It got me thinking.
I’ve always suspected I had some kind of inbuilt facility for remembering words and spellings.
Not learning them consciously, but perhaps seeing a work van speed by or passing a shopfront imprinted their names in my hard drive.
Or seeing a terminus destination on a London bus…
I thought it might be semantic memory, but now I think it’s photographic.
Photographic memory stores images, and images alone.
Maybe that’s what’s been going on when I retrieve my personal index cards.
