Lockdown is distorting our memories – but there are ways to regain control | Julia Shaw

In the absence of life's daily landmarks, we can stop our brains creating false memories by staging memorable events at home

Since the lockdown began, time and memory seem to have lost all meaning. In March, the days seemed incredibly long, interspersed by daily news that had radical effects on our lives. I found myself saying things like, "can you believe it's only been three days since we went into lockdown"? Now, in April, the converse is true. I often find myself trying to remember whether it has been two, three or five weeks since this first started.

During lockdown, the passing of time has come to resemble a Salvador Dali dreamscape. The surrealist artist's famous painting of melting clocks includes a silver pocketwatch draped like a shirt hung up to dry over a dead tree branch. Like overripe cheese, his clocks are soft and malleable, and represent what Dali referred to as "the camembert of time". In an attempt to challenge our sense of reality, he titled this piece The Persistence of Memory. It reminds us that time and memory are inherently linked, and neither are as rigid as we seem to think.