Rapid Recollection Decline

I'm not sure the old adage "your memory plays tricks on you" holds water until you get past a certain age - that point where childhood becomes a golden age of innocence and fun until part of you snaps you back to the realisation that it was actually just really fucking boring. Moments of fun out with your mates that make up  1% of your life between having to stay in because it was raining. Again.

It's like I wonder if I really did actually watch the 1990 FA Cup final, or just think I did because I've seen the goals countless times since. Why can't I remember Kurt Cobain killing himself, when I was 13 years old at the time? Can I really not remember anything from a six month gap in early 1995?

Problems with recollection hit me the other day when I was thinking of a record store I used to frequent in my 18 months or so of living in Aldershot. For those unfamiliar, it is a small town maybe an hour on the train South West of London, most famous for it housing the barracks of a large number of soldiers. When I think of the place, I remember the last time someone punched me and, by no coincidence, it being the last time I punched somebody else. People with Northern accents were not popular.

It had a couple of decent places to buy music, though. Plus an Our Price. One was a small shop located in the nightmarish vestige of the shopping centre (of sorts) in the town centre. I think I bought Giant Steps by the Boo Radleys, Otis Blue and Shine 5 on cassettes for a fiver there. It may well have been a fire sale, as it closed down shortly afterwards.

There was also a cool little video game store, for some reason labouring until the terrible name of 'Kart Klub'. I bought a Playstation 2 there, and the guy behind the counter recommended some horrific RPG game that involved vampires in a mansion the size of Ohio, apparently, which was enough to make me suspect their judgement was duff.

But anyway, the other record store, my brain tells me, was called Spinna Disc. Or I think so. The internet seems to support this but when I try to find it on Google streetview I just come across some pizza takeaway place. And isn't that depressing in a way? But then I worry that perhaps it never existed in the first place and my memory is false. Honestly, I'm worried I'm becoming an unreliable narrator in my own life.