The best excuse of all is often the truthful one: you forgot. You are, after all, only human. But there are times when your failure to remember an invitation, a task, an anniversary, is regarded by others as uncaring, negligent, or even insulting.

You can be blamed for forgetfulness but no one can hold you responsible for the consequences of a medical condition about which most people are mercifully ignorant: amnesia. This is your escape route.

There is no such thing as seven-day amnesia, but no one except, of course, a doctor - knows that. Seven-day amnesia, you can therefore state confidently, is a protective device which is triggered by a traumatic or emotional experience (take your choice of the death of a parent, a car crash, or the disintegration of a meaningful relationship).

This is nature's way, you continue, of maintaining sanity by erasing from the human mind everything - however irrelevant - that transpired during the period when the crisis occurred. Although normal service was resumed immediately afterwards, there are seven 'lost' days in your life during which, for all you know, you may even have murdered someone.

Alternatively, you could be suffering from 'recurring or intermittent amnesia'. This is a spell of forgetfulness, sometimes lasting no longer than half-an-hour, that you have suffered ever since you fell off a garden wall as a child. You can mention that the previous attack was so long ago that you had almost forgotten you were prone to these 'attacks'.

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