Nostalgic times
History is full of everything that has happened, is happening and is likely to happen. Nostalgia is many parts of history that you have personally experienced and like to be reminded of and it triggers mostly happy memories.
While I was reacquainting myself with 'X' this week, I came across a number of posts that took me back in time to a better place that this country once knew. I say reacquainting but that is the wrong word. When I previously used the @craywanderers moniker on there, the site was known as Twitter, which very much summed it up. I don't know what the name 'X' is supposed to signify but I guess it makes sense to somebody.
Among the many snippets of nostalgia that I came across was one post for a drinks company called Corona. Older visitors reading this may have heard of it but, for those of you who haven't, back in the 1960s Corona lorries were seen frequenting the roads in Orpington and the Crays every Saturday evening. They delivered soft drinks or 'pop' to houses where the occupants were regular customers. It was generally a 'treat' night in our house as, limited though my parents' income was, my dad always managed to budget for about half a dozen bottles of the fizzy stuff. In our case, it was cola, cherryade, lemonade, cream soda, limeade and, from memory, orangeade. My favourite of them all was cream soda, but it was also my mum's favourite, too, and she tended to pull rank over me when there was not much of it left in the bottle.
Yet nostalgia can cover many different aspects, not just remembering a fizzy drinks lorry that delivered the weekly family enjoyment. For instance I have happy memories of some of the cars I once owned, even if they didn't always have happy endings. One car in particular, the third car I ever owned, was a Standard 8. I bought it for the princely sum of £25 in 1973 from a family whose father had recently died and the mother wanted it out of the family rather than bequeathed to one of their sons or daughters. No, that is not a misprint; twenty-five quid was so much money in 1973, especially for a youngster like me who was only taking home £12 a week from my job in the City of London.
The cringe moment of owning that car, though, was the morning I was driving to my office near the River Thames and it conked out on me in the outside lane of the Old Kent Road. Yes, traffic built up behind and around me and one or two idiot drivers swore at me from their open windows. But only one person bothered to stop and offer me help, a young bloke driving a Triumph Herald, to whom I gave thanks but I knew the car would start again after it had cooled down a bit. Ah, the heady days of driving a car with an internal combustion engine and not an onboard computer in sight.
Times like that taught me how to be patient and resilient when dealing with cars or machinery. It taught me that, although they may be inanimate objects, they somehow had a mind of their own. I've enjoyed motoring for over 50 years now, since 23 March 1973 when I passed my test first time. Since then I have owned a plethora of motors, some good and some not so good and, thanks to the cataract operations I underwent a couple of years ago I hope to continue driving for a while longer yet. I have 20/20 distance vision again, something I've not had since my youth, and I welcome the DVLA's proposed new compulsory eyesight test for the over-70s.
There are so many different topics that nostalgia covers that I couldn't possibly include them all here, but I'll list some anyway...
The favourite house you lived in when you were growing up.
The happy memories of playing out on your bike with your mates.
The first kiss you had with your new girlfriend or boyfriend.
School dinners. Not all of them were enjoyable but some happily stick in the memory.
Watching Cray Wanderers or your own favourite football team for the first time. I can remember my first time but, can you remember yours?
Your first day in a real full-time job. Mine was decimal day (15 February 1971) so quite easy to remember.
Enjoyable train journeys or bus trips.
Your first or only holiday abroad or at the seaside.
And so on. Happy memories of these and many more can come flooding back if you let them. And that's when nostalgia enters your life.
Try it and see.