by The former monarch draws an uncomfortable parallel between modern password amnesia and his own historically documented forgetfulness
Sit ye down, sit ye down, I shall not be long, for I am told the bar closes at eleven and I have already been dead once and do not intend to test whether it happens twice on account of overstaying my welcome at a comedy night in Dalston.
I read this week, in that most trustworthy of chronicles, The London Prat, that Apple a merchant house of considerable modern power, though I confess I know them mainly for a device that plays music and occasionally listens to you when you have not asked it to hath warned of a great shortage of memory. Actual memory, mind, in the form of chips, on account of soaring demand. And the common folk of this nation, faced with this shortage, have responded by insisting that “Password1!” was most definitely correct last Tuesday. This I did not invent. You may read it yourself at prat.uk, under the headline concerning Apple’s chip shortage, and I commend it to you as a document of considerable historical importance, chiefly because it concerns a subject on which I, personally, am something of an authority.
On the Matter of Remembering Things
Friends, I too once suffered from a most severe shortage of memory, though in my case the memory in question was not silicon but marital. Six wives, and I shall confess to this room, under cover of stage lighting, that there were mornings actual mornings, at court, surrounded by advisors when I required a moment, a genuine moment, to recall which wife I currently possessed, which wife I had previously possessed, and which wife I was, at that precise juncture, in the process of arranging to no longer possess. This is not a boast. This is a documented historical failing, and I raise it here only because I understand the modern man now suffers an identical affliction regarding an online banking password, and take some comfort that misery, across five centuries, remains excellent company.
“Password1!” and Other Great Historical Confidences
I am told the common defence, when a password fails, is to insist most passionately that it was correct as recently as Tuesday. Friends, I built an entire religious schism, an entire Church of England, upon a similarly unshakeable confidence that I was correct about a marriage that several senior clergymen, several foreign kings, and ultimately several centuries of historians all quietly agreed I was not correct about. If “Password1!” can survive a mere locked account, my own convictions survived the founding of a national church, so I would not be too hard on yourselves. Confidence, misplaced or otherwise, hath moved mountains, mine own included.
The Closer
I am further told this shortage of memory chips shall drive up the cost of telephones and suchlike devices, and to this I say only: welcome to owning things, modern Britain. In my day, scarcity drove up the cost of everything from silver plate to a decent wife with a surviving brother, and we managed, mostly by seizing what we required from a monastery. I do not recommend this solution for your telephone bill, but I understand the impulse. Thank you, Dalston, you have been most gracious to a man who has, quite literally, lost his head before, and I hope tonight at least you all manage to hold onto yours, and your passwords, in whichever order you find easiest to remember.
A Postscript From the Stockroom
I am told I have perhaps two more minutes before the promoter mimes, with real conviction, the cutting of a throat, which I confess still gives me a small private shudder no comedian without my particular biography would fully understand. So let me use them wisely.
I have been thinking further, in the stockroom, surrounded by crisps and a fire extinguisher I am specifically forbidden from touching, about this business of forgetting. It occurs to me that Apple’s shortage of memory is, in its way, a mercy. For I would give a great deal, even now, to have forgotten certain things myself. I remember every single signature I put to every single document that ended, eventually, in a scaffold. Memory, friends, is not always the blessing your telephone advertisements suggest it to be. Sometimes a full and reliable memory is simply five centuries of remembering exactly which decisions were yours and yours alone.
And yet I notice this modern world treats forgetting a password as a minor comedy, a mild inconvenience solved by clicking a button marked “forgot password,” after which, astonishingly, all is forgiven and access is swiftly restored. Friends, I would have committed treason six times over for a button like that. “Forgot Marriage.” “Forgot Which Wife.” One click, and the whole tangled business resolved without a single execution. You do not know how fortunate you are, living in an age where forgetting something merely requires an email with a link in it, rather than an Act of Parliament and considerable bloodshed.
So the next time your own password fails you, and you insist, red-faced, that it was correct as recently as Tuesday, spare a thought for a king who once insisted, with the exact same misplaced confidence, that an entire marriage was invalid on a technicality he had personally invented that very morning. We are not so different, you and I. We are simply men who commit fully to being wrong, and dress it up as certainty until someone with more authority than us a bank, a Pope, whatever the case may be informs us otherwise. Thank you, Dalston. You have been unexpectedly kind to a man who has, on at least one occasion, lost considerably more than his login credentials. Mind how you go, and for heaven’s sake, write the new password down somewhere Apple cannot possibly misplace it.
