As talents go, it was more the hot little light of a match, or perhaps a candle, but it was still there nevertheless.
Now, like the overweight and panting Rabbit Angstrom, I slave desperately to recover that which once came so easily - the dual shock of time and inertia dwindling it to a nub.
It's taken 15 years of travelling in a circle and, like the religious zealot, conveniently amending or overlooking the evidence of my own eyes, before I got back to the same place I departed from without a second thought.
In a secondary school of 1200 pupils, I think I am justified in saying I was the single best one when it came to learning foreign languages. I was gripped by a paradox: the fact that it required no effort caused me to work even harder at it, and I permitted everything else - science, mathematics, woodwork, geography, history - to wither beyond being irretrievable.
My lack of mathematical aptitude is testimony to this mental atrophy. I stare blankly at descriptions of imaginary numbers, am incapable of understanding what a squared second might be, and cannot explain the difference between a vector which has dimensions and one which does not.
So whatever speck of talent I possess is restricted to one thing only. I suspect I shall probably be a happier and more stable person for having made this all-too-obvious breakthrough. A decade-and-a-half too late, then, I am re-learning Spanish - and the disgustingly easy superiority I used to enjoy is, I am pained to say, no more.
I push the preterite tense up a steep hill: is it discubrà or discubrÃo? Is it hizo or hico? Such things used to be spat out, perfectly, without having to reflect on them, but now I tread uncertainly. I long for the smooth, flowing correctness to re-assert itself.
