The mind sieve (reprise)

A couple of weeks ago I was rambling on about how our minds are apparently only capable of holding on to four or five facts from an hour-long talk (keep scrolling down, if you’re really interested, and you should hopefully spot the original piece).

The subject continues to nag away, mainly because the whisky festival season has started again – it is actually more akin to Dylan’s Never-Ending Tour. That means I’ll be on my hind legs on a semi-regular basis talking about whisky. And other things probably, I find it hard to stick to one subject. I apologise in advance.

Never-ending: Dave Broom and Bob Dylan are both martyrs to their respective causes

If this whole four or five things in an hour is true, then how much can anyone remember after a whisky festival? How does steady dramming affect the uptake of information?

At home I’ll taste six drams, then take a long break before re-tasting, but that’s a luxury which isn’t possible at a fair where, quite naturally, you want to try as much as you can. Trouble is, once you do try everything, you can’t remember what you had three hours ago. To be honest, you probably have difficulty remembering your name.

So, there’s an element of (dare I say it) self-control needed. You can’t have every dram, so look at the racing card and pick the ones you really want to try (tip: don’t ever go straight for the ‘Give me your most expensive/oldest’ gambit – that’s a sure-fire way to get a distiller’s back up).

Make room for things you have never tried before – open your mind to surprises. Drink plenty of water. Eat! Spit! Take notes and then re-read them. If you can’t understand the scrawl, then sit down and drink more water. It is your friend.

The room, somehow, plays a part in this. After all, every show basically does the same thing: tables, drams, people; yet even some which offer free food and plentiful water end up as drunken brawls within an hour of opening, while others – even with more whisky on offer – are calm and controlled.

I thought that people’s behaviour at a show was a cultural thing: drinkers in some countries are just more badly behaved than others, but it’s not true. Shows in the same city with the same drams can be either a mess or superb.

It could time – the higher the price of the ticket and the shorter the duration of the show, the greater the incentive is to drink fast and hard to recoup the outlay: ‘Hey, I’m in profit.’ Long days might be tiring for the folks behind the stands, but they work.

Ultimately, though, it’s the space. The tighter it is, the deeper the queues around the stands become and the tension rises exponentially. If people are feeling physically constricted in an environment where time is constrained – and alcohol is served – then there’s only going to be one outcome. The physical space – the room, the ceiling height – is important, as is controlling numbers. 

After all, if there are only a few pieces of information that people will take away, then they need to have space to think about them, and relax.