Two unrelated events over the past couple of months have got me thinking about nostalgia. Firstly, our half term holiday to the Peak District brought back a flood of familiar names that I remembered from my childhood. There I was, transported back to the age of 12, sitting in the car outside an antiques shop in Buxton while my parents rummaged around and oohed and aahed over "boring old junk". Or maybe thinking back to freezing in a cave with my friend Alison, laughing as the water dripped onto our heads from the stalactites above. Lyme Park hadn't changed much in over 20 years - unless you counted the state of the art playground that now seems de rigueur for any self-respecting tourist attraction.
Driving home after our holiday, we detoured to try and beat the inevitable South Manchester traffic jams, until there they were - the really familiar names from my childhood. Cheadle. Gatley. We passed my old school - the school where I spent only two years, and yet where, if I close my eyes I can still see the crowds of uniformed pupils meandering down the corridors, or smell the fear of going into the girls' toilets in case the older girls were in there smoking.
The day after we came back, myself and a few girlfriends - all now in our 30s and (shhh) 40s - went to a local 80s night, where Limahl (he of Kajagoogoo fame) and various other artistes transported us back to our youth, along with a crowd of other similarly middle-aged people.
I tried explaining all of this to my daughters, whose blank incomprehension finally made me laugh. The thing is, nostalgia is completely lost on the young. Try telling a six year old that there were only 3 television channels and no tv in the mornings when you were young - or that nobody had mobile phones, and music came on giant black discs. The look of withering pity and incomprehension is enough to make you sob into your snakebite and black...
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and put my legwarmers on.
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P.S. Just popping a link here to the lovely people at Appliances Online in exchange for a gift from the Fairy Hobmother. You may have seen them around on other blogs. Leave a comment - and who knows, they might visit you too!
Love it... I really chuckled!!
ReplyDeleteLove it.. I really chuckled.. And then stopped when I realised how old I feel!!
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of things wasted on the young - energy, enthusiasm, time! I loved this trip back into the dark ages!! (I'm smiling!)
ReplyDeleteI've got a drawer of leg warmers. Does that make me retro or retard?
As for those Fairy Hobmother folk at http://www.appliancesonline.co.uk/ - don't believe they exist! Another flashbackof yours?
3 television channels....you were lucky! I do actually remember the man from the television shop visiting my granny's house to set her t.v. up with a second channel....ITV I think!
ReplyDeleteSo by that, you'll know that passing the big four zero is nostalgia for me.
Nostalgia is only good when it's a first hand experience. My parents told me how hard it was in the war, but unless you've experienced it first hand, it might as well be a history book.
Yes our kids will develop a sense of nostalgia, but it will be for the primitive things they remember from their youth, like blogging and i-pads! Or, to paraphrase Peter Kay, "things were tough back then, your mother had to unload the dishwasher BY HAND, and we only had one car each".
I still have a vinyl record deck!!!!
Oooh, would have loved to go to that 80's night with you! :)
ReplyDeleteAs for nostalgia, when my kids saw my old vinyls, their comment was: "Wow, CDs were THAT BIG in your days, Mummy?" ;)
Brilliant! :-D
ReplyDeleteStrangely vinyl record decks seem to be one of those things that are still hanging around for music purists.
ReplyDeleteWow - a whole drawer of leg warmers?!
ReplyDelete(I should probably confess at this stage that I have never actually owned a pair of leg warmers - artistic licence and all that...)
You're only as old as the...er...woman you feel, as the saying goes ;)
ReplyDeleteYes. There are all sorts of audio-techno arguments, but also, they have remained popular with many club DJs.
ReplyDeleteOnly 3 channels? Blimey, you really are old Mrs B (I can't possibly remember a time when we had no Channel 4!).
ReplyDeleteThey do say that your memory starts to go when you get older you know...
ReplyDeleteYou'll have us using public telephones and pressing buttons 'A' and 'B' next... or putting coal on the fire. And never mind FILM, what about FLASHBULBS? (In case you're wondering, no, I never used flash powder. I'm not quite THAT old.
ReplyDelete