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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13802
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Who was it who said "The past is another country; they do things differently there?" Maybe I've misquoted, but no matter.
I went today to the river, for a picnic. I was opposite the first sailing club I ever joined. My wife, my son, and I. To be fair it was meant to be a date with my wife, and we weren't going there at all. But sons have to be collected from parties and fed, so he joined us.
A lot happened in my life with that sailing club. This summer is 34 years after I joined it, 34 years after I bought my first boat, 33 years after I persuaded the boy I then adored to join me and sail with me.
"Ah," you are thinking, "it all came flooding back, then." But no, it didn't.
Instead I felt a very peculiar and unemotional detatchment. I didn;t tell my family what went through my head. I did feel a gentle sadness that I had so loved him that I had treated him badly just because his skills could not live up to my expectations (I'd wanted the illusory "us" to be wonderful and all conquering. Then, surely, he would love me back?). I felt a little foolish, and just a little old and grey.
And oddly I also felt a comfort, that he is still, after almost two years of being free from the obsession, still in my past. And he used to be in my present.
I saw odd things. A boat that was 40 or more years old competing oin level terms with ones built yesterday, and leading the fellt. Amazing. I saw my odl family doctor, now very grey haired, sailing single handed in a small dinghy thathe built for his sons in his dining room. I saw a grey haired shock of hair that used to be a dark brown shock of hair on a pompous professor (who had the sexiest son, I remember from that time ago).
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be, that's for sure.
I think I showed myself today that some of the things we thing are everlasting actually tarnish over time. I saw clearly why I left that club and moved on. Ditch crawling in no wind was really rather awful. But it was th eclub closest to hime, and my father would drive me there. And wait grumpily if I was late to depart.
I wonder why I waited so long to grow up.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Nostalgia is exactly where it belongs... In the past...
But it is so nice to recollect the fading memories...
And growing up... Now there is a concept that is as fluid as water...
I don't think we so much grow up... as we grow away from the old things and grow into the new ones...
I dread the day when I look into the mirror and admit to myself that I am grown up... I would much rather just keep growing...
Nover loose youre point of view Tim... It is a very special vantage... Treasure it...
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
From The Go-Between.
It's one of my favourite quotes.
It can be a curious and puzzling experience trying to work out why we thought what we thought then and we why did what we did then. But sometimes we feel we have to try because we know that laying the ghosts of the past to rest will help us move on.
And why would you be in any rush to grow up?
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james fenwick
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Getting started |
Registered: January 1970
Messages: 3
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I guess I'm a bit of a nostalgia buff, but I'm not alone! My joint-favourite poet A. E. Housman, wrote (in his collection 'A Shropshire Lad'):
"Into my heart an air that kills from yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills, what spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content; I see it, shining plain -
The happy highways where I went, but cannot go again."
Those who don't know Housman, but find the lines familiar may be drama buffs (it inspired Dennis Potter's play 'Blue Remembered Hills') or film buffs (the lines were spoken over the closing credits of 'Walkabout', starring Jenny Agutter and David Gumpilil). Whatever, it sums me up completely!
Bring back the 1960s NOW!!!!!!!
{PS - Pedants' Corner - the last four words of the poem should strictly be ' ...and cannot come again.' - but I like the version above better, so there!
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