I was visiting my friend, Tacitus, yesterday. He and his husband are working on some fascinating projects that explain and link architectural and design choices going back millennia. They are known and respected in academic circles, and have a number of high profile (in the business) supporters.

One of their projects is the creation of a mausoleum which will use their architectural insights to give the building hidden depths to the meaning of the building.

I asked, at one point, about the use of natural light and how that would distort the imagery because of how daylight diffuses and originates from a single point.

Their explanation was that the human mind will see the architectural hints and fill in the gaps. When the viewer’s brain suddenly makes sense of its surroundings, there would be an almost spiritual “ah-ha!” moment.

The power of many people’s brains to fill in missing details, or extrapolate from incomplete date, or make stuff up based on what it expects to see – or hear – is half the magic of art and half the problem in conversation!

It got me thinking about the conversation that I had with my husband a week or so ago. He was devastated by what he thought I’d said (he thought I’d told him that he was old and a bag of bones).

One of the advantages of being a compulsive writer is that I had written down exactly what I had said. It was nothing like what my husband had thought I’d said.

So I think he partly heard what I said, and his brain, expecting something else, filled in details. I know that my head can do the same, so perhaps I should be less cross with him for mishearing me – and then jumping off the deep end!

Well, maybe I would if he’d apologise for it!

Much of our time together I have largely assumed that my husband’s memory of conversations is better than mine. Actually, I have taken his recollections as gospel. This undermines that belief.

Maybe that’s a good thing.