The Journey, in concept, is identical to The House - It's just that a journey provides more opportunities to link a list item with a locus and therefore can be used with longer lists.

Practitioners of these techniques often use a journey where more than a single route can be followed to the same destination to remember lists with different branches. Each route option can then be used individually or grouped together.

An important preparatory step in using the journey technique is to make sure you really do know the journey's route in detail and from end to end.

A great advantage of associating ideas, facts and list items with a familiar journey is that you can make a journey from start to finish - but you can also make the return trip. In this way it's possible to run through a long list of memorised items forwards and backwards with the same effort. And since any journey can be broken down into smaller journeys, it is easy to join lists together into longer lists or break long lists down into shorter ones.

Use the same reinforcement options we looked at in The House.

The Roman Room, as its name suggests, is just as ancient as the other two techniques we're looking at. It is more appropriate to memorising information where items are grouped together and many practitioners suggest that it is a powerful tool in learning languages.

To use this memory technique put aside thoughts of sequence and physical movement and think of a single room you know well: Your bedroom, kitchen or office, perhaps. Focus on the image of this room in your mind.

In it are objects with which you are familiar.

The memory tool is based on associating an image of the information you need to remember with a single object in the room. This process is sometimes called pegging, in that you peg an idea or fact to a known object. Use the same techniques for making the links positively memorable as you did in The House. If your table lamp is used to remember Elton John, then see his little chubby head emerging from the top of the lampshade and, maybe, his platform-shoed feet hanging out beneath it and . . . Keep going, it's your fantasy image!

Recalling the memorised information is based on glancing around your mental picture of the room, visualising the familiar objects there and linking to the memorised information. (Can you ever think of that table lamp without also thinking of Elton John now?)

Linking works by starting with the first item to be remembered and finding a memorable link to the next item.

You remember that three bears went to the breakfast table, the porridge was too hot and they went for a walk. A little girl called Goldilocks . . .

It is unlikely you'd miss out the too hot scene of this story or that you'd try to put it into the narrative before the bears went to the breakfast table.

That's the upside of The Link. The downside is that forgetting just one link will destroy the recall of the list. (Using places or objects on which to peg ideas gets around this, of course.)

Bear in mind, though, that there doesn't need to be any underlying logic to the story or any reason for things to happen (or not happen). And, since it is in your mind and nowhere else, you don't need to worry about its content: No-one can censor it or sue you for libel!

Again, an example is probably the best way to show how to use this technique.

Let's take the Archbishops of York during the twentieth century. The list begins with William Maclagan who was enthroned before 1900, in 1891, ending with David Hope whose tenure began in 1995. We'll memorise only their surnames on this pass.

We need to start this story off - Something to link to Maclagan. If there is no initial link we might never recall the first item in the list. So we could start off with a vision of York or York Minster.

The scene is set.

What springs to mind when you see or hear the word Maclagan? Mac sounds Scottish and lag means hanging behind, not keeping up and an is almost a girl's name (You must know someone called Ann/Anne. A Scottish one, maybe?)

From our mental image of York Minster we see the doors burst open and all the people leaving the Minster with Scottish (Mac) Anne (in her tartan) lagging behind everyone else.

"I'm a Lang way behind", she calls out to you, in her Scottish accent.

You take her hand and ask her where all the people are going (especially since she is, as she says, such a Lang way behind them all) and she tells you they are going to the Temple. "But isn't that in London?", you ask her, thinking of where all the solicitors and barristers hang out there.

"Gar!", she says (though you're not sure why - is she sort-tempered with you?) "Bett you didn't know that's where we we going, did you?".

"Yes." you tell her, you did know because while you were shepherding the flock round the Minster, you'd heard a Ram say that's where the people were all going to go. You tell her that you'd heard the Ram say and then Anne tells you she'd like to go to London on her motorbike but the gears are broken. You tell her to get a new Cogg, Anne.

She is very embarrassed about not knowing she needed a new part for her motorbike and her faces flushes: "Don't Blanch", you tell her. She tells you it's not embarrassment, using a silly little-girl voice because she really is embarrassed, but she didn't Hab a good reason to buy one sooner.

You tell her you really Hope she will be able to get one in time to ride all the way to London.

And bid her a fond farewell.