When I get together with old school mates, sadly these days almost exclusively at funerals, they often comment on how much I remember from those old days gone by. 

I guess we all have our superpower and mine appears to be remembering stuff that happened 50 years ago that no-one else cares about.

Sometimes the memory needs a spark and I got one of those this week when I read the ODT Today in History and saw that, on that day in 1978, two lions escaped the circus they were travelling with in Lawrence.

This was also, as I remember it, the first night I had ever been left alone at home, at the grand old age of just-turned-nine.  

Of course, in today’s world, 14 is deemed the magical age that a youngster is old enough to stay at home unsupervised, but these were simpler times. And frankly, I think I’d trust a nine-year-old Timothy at home on his own a whole lot more than I would have trusted the 14-year-old version. But I digress. 

I can’t remember exactly how I found out about the wandering lions but imagine it would have been one of those incredibly exciting news flashes that came on the telly when some earth-shattering event occurred. Do you remember those, and how there would be five or ten seconds (that seemed an eternity) where the “newsflash” picture would come up accompanied by high-tension music and there would be hurried speculation as to which world leader had died, what plane had crashed or what man-eater had gone walk-about? 

Of course, we didn’t have cell phones and great things like the Central App sending us notifications so how else were we to get the urgent news we needed?

 Not having a cell phone also didn’t enable me to find out that: (a) It’s 48 kilometres from Lawrence where the lions were to Balclutha where I was; and (b) Lions walk at around 3-4 kilometres an hour.  

I was, and still am, a nerd and should have been able to figure that out by consulting my trusty Encyclopaedia Britannica so can only blame a little bit of panic for causing me to ring my mum who was at work at the hospital (4180500 - told you I am a repository of useless information) to let her know that she needed to be careful coming home in case the lions got her.

There’s no great point to this story but as I write it, a Mum is walking past my office at council holding the hand of a wee man I’m guessing is aged a bit over two. I wonder what he will remember of the next few years ahead of him when he gets to my age?