Middle Class Problems: Trying to remember other people's names

Robert Epstein has no other option than to let the person opposite finish his sentence

'Hello this is, er, um ... well, why don't you try to remember each other's names?' (iStock/Getty Images)

'Ha ha! Goodness… It's been ages, hasn't it? When was the last… Was it? Amazing to think how time… This? This is my wife. Marianne, I'd like you to meet…"

Harold Pinter could not have envisioned a pause this long. But I'm not going to break. Not because I'm particularly strong-willed, but because I have no other option than to let the person opposite finish my sentence. The person opposite, with a face I vaguely recognise, but dash it all if I can remember his name. Paul? Stuart? Asif? Could be anything.

I have form in this area. Once, an icy chill flew down my spine as we walked home. A freelancer I had worked with (quite frequently, over a number of years) was approaching. I knew he lived nearby, though I'd not seen him out and about. Fifty paces: what the hell is his name. Forty: oh god. Thirty: think, dammit. Twenty: just smile! Ten: wave, as if you can't stop. Five: he's stopping; this is not good. "Hi! You two have met, haven't you?" I say to the "stranger" and my wife. "This'll be a fun game: why don't you try to remember each other's names."

It is not fun. It is absurd.

You'd think my wife would be embarrassed, but she's as bad. On our very first date, I spent half-an-hour hoping that my former neighbour Jen (yes, I know that now, don't I?) wouldn't notice us in the far corner of the bar, while my wife-to-be carried out a ridiculous charade with someone she'd been to university with.

Come to think of it, perhaps that shared moment of forgetful shame is what convinced us we were right for each other from the off…