A few months back I visited someone in Mangakino, a small New Zealand central North Island town, originally built for the workers who were constructing the huge hydro dam of the same name. I had visited there as a kid to see the massive building works. When I returned home, a drive of around 40 minutes, my wife enquired where I had been. I knew where I had been in crisp detail, but not the name of the town. Whakamaru was the next town and that I remembered well from my schoolboy visit over 60 years ago. But Mangakino had taken fright and raced away from my finely tuned neurones. “Come back,” I wanted to shout. But I could only bleat: “It’s slipped my mind. I’ll remember later.”
