In my hazy morning state, yet to recall that I shaved the previous evening, I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror, make a professional double-take, and Scream. It's a deep manly scream, completely appropriate for a shock encounter with the rum and uncanny, but a scream nonetheless. Fresh of face, chubby of cheek, naked as the day I was born; for some reason the image just does not compute.

A couple of coffees later and I can again view my reversal without freaking out, but that was an odd start to the day.

An hour after the sudden onset of prosopagnosia, after negotiating the 18 inch snowdrift outside my front door, I meet a man shovelling snow off the steepest road in Chipping Norton. I'm on my way down, he is about half-way up, and I wish him luck with the rest. By the time I get to the bottom, everything he's cleared has already filled in again. Poor bugger, it's going to be a long day.