In the four months since I had a brain haemorrhage I have had several tests to find out how my mind has been affected. The first tests were conducted in Siena, where I had been taken to hospital after falling ill on a spring holiday in Tuscany. A nice Italian lady showed up with bundles of problems for me to resolve. They ranged from mathematical ones of the sort one used to face at primary school — how many apples costing so much each could be bought with so much money and leave how much change — to finishing incomplete sentences and explaining events or processes depicted in drawings. Although I have never been good at maths, I found the mathematical questions easiest to answer: sometimes the drawings were indecipherable.
Back in London I underwent other tests. Lots of them were to do with memory.
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