Forgetting stuff

I’ve been stopped by HMRC in Dover and asked “Where have you been?” and completely forgotten. So I’ve thought “Germany? Italy? Belgium? Spain?” and I just haven’t had a clue. I’ve had so say “Errr, hang on while I get the paperwork”. Bizarrely enough though, while I thought this must have been extremely suspicious behaviour, they always acted as though it was a fairly normal occurrence.