When you're just a kid and some doddery old soul is searching for the right word (and it's usually something very simple), you've no patience.

Of course, when you're going into the doddery area yourself (or you're just having a bad memory day), it's a different matter.

Two things that happened recently brought this to mind. A colleague carefully prepared her lunch in a little plastic lunch box at home. Salad, fruit, yoghurt -- all the healthy things that never seem to appeal when lunchtime actually comes around.

But when she got to work, she'd picked up another little plastic box, in which she keeps the old bits of smelly cheese to use in scrambled egg etc. She was not pleased with herself, but it gave her -- and us -- a laugh.

To cheer her up, I told her about a mutual acquaintance who arrived at work with a Marks & Spencer carrier bag. "Is Marks open this early?" I asked her in surprise.

She looked at the bag as though seeing it for the first time. "Glory be!" she exclaimed. "I was on my way to the bin with this bag of rubbish at home ... but I've brought it all the way here on the bus!"

Now this all sounds very funny and cheering -- much like the friend who insisted on putting the bread for the birds on the step and flinging the milk bottles into the garden.

But it's no laughing matter when it's you with the mind-block.

I was asking my youngest daughter to, please, go and fetch the .... Then the word deserted me.

I described it. "You know, you have a board and you push it down on clothes and they go flat."

Yes, you've got it -- the iron.

How can anyone forget the word "iron"! I was mortified, especially as it took minutes before she discovered what I was banging on about, having failed completely to recognise the description.

Never mind. It's probably one of those age things that comes with knees that click and backs that ache if you stay in bed.

But at least I've not arrived at work with a rubbish bag from -- oh, what's the name of that store again? It's big ... branches everywhere .... two words ....