Have you ever forgotten or lost a period in your life.

I most certainly have. I can recall events from my childhood (not all by any means) and yet later periods are a complete blank.

There may be a few of you out there thinking magic mushrooms, LSD and its associates and of course the demon drink. Even old age can have some part to play. But I have a blank period in my life from around the age of 17. I’ve tried regression and I can remember lots and lots to the run up to that period in my life and plenty more after that period but one period in particular - which I SHOULD have found memorable is a complete blank!

So I gained a little comfort from something I read in my newspaper today. It says: Boffins reckon that memories of painful break-ups and other traumas could be erased from memory with a small dose of ANAESTHETIC.

The findings mirror the Jim Carey film, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, where a man uses such a medical fix to wipe out thoughts of his ex. Scientists have discovered that low doses of the drugs - 10% that needed to knock a person out - effectively blocked communication between the "emotion" section and the "long-term memory" parts of the brain thus stopping the formation of links to distressing images.

University of California researchers said that it could lead to a drug that could be taken soon after trauma or harrowing event to bring an end to post-traumatic stress disorder that is suffered by millions throughout the world.

It could also help explain why I can’t remember ANYTHING about a weeks holiday I had with my cousin and his brothers and sister and their parents when I was a young teenager. About the only thing I CAN remember of that holiday is that it was about three mile walk down a long lane to the beach.